Après un Rêve Belle Époque – Nights at the Piano by Emmanuel Despax

Various composers

Emmanuel Despax

Après un Rêve Belle Époque – Nights at the Piano

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212074725
Catnr: SIGCD 747
Release date: 07 July 2023
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Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212074725

Catalogue number
SIGCD 747

Release date
07 July 2023

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

"Après un rêve" is an album that holds a special significance to me on a personal level. It is an ode to the French Belle Époque repertoire, depicting the beauty of dreams and the night. The title is inspired by Fauré's mesmerising song, which I have arranged here for piano solo. I have always been drawn to the evocative and poetic nature of this music, as well as its remarkable diversity, finesse, and capacity to create exquisite orchestral textures on the piano.

This album is also a tribute to my grandfather, Jacques Charpentreau, a French poet who adored this repertoire and frequently drew inspiration from the night in his works.

I have curated some of his poetry, as well as works by other poets he admired to complement this music, taking the listener on an immersive poetic and musical journey through this nocturnal landscape:

Le piano dans la nuit

Écoute le piano

Comme une voix qui chante

Cette complainte lente

C'est la nuit qui descend

Sur la peine du monde

Caresse de l'espace

Quelques notes qui passent

Comme un souffle de l'air

Comme un soupir du feu

Comme un chant de la terre

Comme un frisson de l'eau

La grâce la douceur

Le battement d'un coeur

Écoute le piano

— Jacques Charpentreau

Artist(s)

Emmanuel Despax (piano)

Emmanuel Despax has gained worldwide recognition as a singular artist, whose interpretations bring a rare sincerity and imagination to the music.
A remarkable performer of romantic and post- romantic music, he has been invited to give recital performances in the UK (Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Chipping Campden and Petworth Festivals, and the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, where he was appointed artistic director in 2020 of a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle); in France (Louvre Auditorium, Salle Cortot, Salle Gaveau, International Festival Les Nuits Pianistiques in Aix-en-Provence, L’été Musical au Poujoula, and Les Nuits du Château de la Moutte in Saint-Tropez); Benelux (Amsterdam, The Hague and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels); Cyprus (Pharos Arts Foundation); Italy (Fazioli auditorium); and in South America.
Past engagements include two tours of New Zealand, hailed by critics for his recitals in the prestigious Fazioli International Piano Series in Auckland and concerto performances with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. In the UK, Emmanuel Despax has also played with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras, among others. He is also regularly broadcast on Medici TV, France Musique, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM. His work as a talented broadcaster has included presenting a probing and approachable edition of BBC Radio 3’s Inside Music, and he is already amassing an impressive, critically acclaimed discography.
In addition to his recording of Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton, prior releases include ‘Spira, Spera’ (Bach transcriptions) which was awarded Critics’ Choice in International Piano (“Despax is awe-inspiring in his combination of virtuosity and intellectual grasp”). His concerto debut featured Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 and Stephen Goss Piano Concerto, and his collection of Chopin preludes was Classic FM’s “Album of the Week” and awarded five stars in Diapason. Despax also released a piano fantasy based on the themes of The Sound of Music in celebration of the musical’s 60th anniversary.
His 2021 album of Chopin’s piano concerti with the Chineke! Chamber Ensemble, was chosen as “Album of the Week” by Classic FM and The Times: “[The result] is entrancing, with piano and string quintet intimately interweaving...Despax’s opening statement arrives like a blast of dynamite. Though he sinks happily into meltingly lovely reverie when Chopin’s intentions allow, he’s driven mostly by dark energy and muscular strength. In doing so, Despax reveals to us the music of a 20-year-old already stretching beyond decorative brilliance towards the powerful expression of contradictory, sometimes troubling emotions.” His latest album release, Après un rêve, on Signum Records, has also gained recognition in The Times and Classic FM as “Album of the Week” and received a 5-star review in BBC Music Magazine: “Despax is a formidable pianist, thoughtful and imaginative. Like an expert painter at the canvas, he carefully layers and tones sound, expertly measuring touch and pedal. This is beautiful playing, on an elegant yet substantial album.” Born in Paris and now based in London, Emmanuel Despax started playing the piano in Aix-en-Provence before joining the Yehudi Menuhin School, then the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Ruth Nye, one of Claudio Arrau’s star students. He won numerous awards during his studies (Chappell Medal, Tagore Gold Medal), and benefited from the advice of Nikolai Demidenko, Leon Fleisher, Yehudi Menuhin, Dominique Merlet, Mstislav Rostropovich, Murray Perahia and András Schiff.
For this upcoming season, Emmanuel looks forward to collaborating with the Piatti Quartet at Kings Place followed by multiple solo and chamber performances at London’s brand new Bechstein Hall.

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Composer(s)

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of non-traditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant Among his most famous works are his Clair de Lune, his Three Nocturnes...

Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed.
Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of non-traditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant Among his most famous works are his Clair de Lune, his Three Nocturnes and his orchestral piece La Mer.

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Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

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Henri Duparc

Henri Duparc is perhaps one of the most efficient composers of music history: with just a handful of works he made himself famous. After all, Duparc was an extraordinary perfectionist; he could work on a single song for years. That was his specialty too: songs, for solo voice and piano accompaniment. In 16 years, Duparc composed 13 songs to his satisfaction, after which he quit composing in 1885, at the age of 37. He settled down in a calm family life and spent his time reading and painting watercolours. This step was partly due to a growing hypersensitivity. The extreme sensitiveness, the perfectionism and the refined artistic taste can all be heard in his songs: these are unique for their...

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Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, conductor, pianist and organist. He was a musical prodigy, writing his first pieces of music at the age of four and making his concert debut at the age of ten. During this concert he astonished the audience by playing one of the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven at its request. After his studying at the Conservatory of Paris he followed a career as a church organist at Saint-Merri and later La Madeleine in Paris. He was also a successful freelance composer and pianist in France and abroad.
Saint-Saëns initially helped to introduce German composers such as Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner in France. However, from 1870 onwards anti-German sentiments began to arise in France as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, which enhanced support for the idea of a pro-French musical society. In 1871 Saint-Saëns consequently founded the Société Nationale de Musique together with Romain Bussine, that was devoted to the promotion of French music and organised concerts on which young composers could perform their works.
Saint-Saëns was a keen traveler, and made 179 trips to 27 different countries during his life. He favoured Algeria and Egypt, were he gained inspiration for compositions such as the Suite Algérienne and the Fifth Piano Concerto, also known as The Egyptian.
Saint-Saëns' best-known works include the First Cello Concerto, Third Symphony, the opera Samson et Dalila, Danse Macabre and Le carnaval des animaux, a humorous suite in which various animals are musically portrayed. However, he never wanted the last work to be performed, since it was contrary to his image as a serious composer.

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Cécile Chaminade

Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré was a French Romantic composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Nocturnes for piano and the songs Après un rêve and Clair de lune. Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.

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Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was 'L'art pour l'art': they composed music for the sake of...

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was "L'art pour l'art": they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.

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