Milhaud

This programme of 1920s French music is in the hands of a conductor who gets right into the spirit of it, and plenty of spirit there is too. Apart from the Ibert, this is ballet music, and that work too originated as a theatre piece, having been incidental music for Eugene Labiche's farce The Italian Straw Hat. Poulenc's unfailingly fresh and bouncy suite from Les biches is very enjoyable although Chandos's warm and resonant recording takes some of the edge off the trumpet tone that is so central to the writing. The geniality of it all makes one forget that this is remarkable music in which (as Christopher Palmer's booklet essay points out) the twentieth-century French composer evokes eighteenth-century fetes galantes through the eyes of that greatest of nineteenth-century ballet composers, Tchaikovsky.

The cycle of Milhaud symphonies with the Basel Symphony Orchestra under Alun Francis doesn't seem to have received critical attention worthy of its importance. It is true that Milhaud, being extremely prolific, had a certain tendency at times to revert to mere note-spinning, and the music is not "easy" in the sense of, say, his `Le Boeuf sur le Toit', being often polytonal, densely polyphonic and at times almost overly busy. But they are almost always surprisingly engaging, and more variegated than you might expect. It took Milhaud five years from the ……..

G.D. @ Amazon.com

The Quatuor Parisii was founded in 1981 by four Paris Conservatoire students, who played Milhaud's String Quartet No 4 in 1984 and promised Milhaud's widow Madeleine then that they would record all eighteen. They went on to win many prestigious competitions, remained together and completed this project last year. The performances are as good as you could reasonably expect (a few moments show a little strain) and are well recorded……

The Quatuor Parisii was founded in 1981 by four Paris Conservatoire students, who played Milhaud's String Quartet No 4 in 1984 and promised Milhaud's widow Madeleine then that they would record all eighteen. They went on to win many prestigious competitions, remained together and completed this project last year. The performances are as good as you could reasonably expect (a few moments show a little strain) and are well recorded……

The Quatuor Parisii was founded in 1981 by four Paris Conservatoire students, who played Milhaud's String Quartet No 4 in 1984 and promised Milhaud's widow Madeleine then that they would record all eighteen. They went on to win many prestigious competitions, remained together and completed this project last year. The performances are as good as you could reasonably expect (a few moments show a little strain) and are well recorded…….

The Quatuor Parisii was founded in 1981 by four Paris Conservatoire students, who played Milhaud's String Quartet No 4 in 1984 and promised Milhaud's widow Madeleine then that they would record all eighteen. They went on to win many prestigious competitions, remained together and completed this project last year. The performances are as good as you could reasonably expect (a few moments show a little strain) and are well recorded…..

The Quatuor Parisii was founded in 1981 by four Paris Conservatoire students, who played Milhaud's String Quartet No 4 in 1984 and promised Milhaud's widow Madeleine then that they would record all eighteen. They went on to win many prestigious competitions, remained together and completed this project last year. The performances are as good as you could reasonably expect (a few moments show a little strain) and are well recorded……

This is a nice little selection of the chamber music of Darius Milhaud featuring clarinet, violin, and piano in varying combinations, beginning with the brief Suite for all three instruments. There's a gentleness and wittiness in most of this music – although Milhaud could also be dolorous, for example in the introduction of the Suite's finale – primarily because he drew on themes from his stage music for the Suite, Scaramouche, and the Cinéma fantaisie d'après Le bœuf sur le toit, not to mention the presence of his trademark infectious Brazilian rhythms. The Violin Sonata No. 2 and the Clarinet Sonatina are slightly more serious in mood, and in the case of the Sonatina, more harmonically adventurous. The three musicians here – clarinetist Jean-Marc Fessard, violinist Frédéric Pélassy, and pianist Eliane Reyes – work excellently together to bring the music to life. Their ensemble work in the Suite is sharply precise. Even in the Sonata and Sonatina, there is a sense that it's not all just about the violin or clarinet. Pélassy and Fessard allow Reyes to bring out the piano part to show that the works are often more like true duets, for example in Scaramouche's dizzying opening or the Violin Sonata's Vif movement. The Fantaisie is a more of a duet almost by necessity because there's so much going on in it, but without a doubt it's the violin that gets the spotlight with some fancy effects (such as playing in two keys at once) and even a cadenza that's not in the original work. The three musicians also give detailed attention to coloring in a natural, instinctive-sounding way.

French intellectuals, especially musicians and writers, were enchanted by the magic of Richard Wagner's music, but they earnestly wanted to pursue new ideas for what might follow. They believed that music and art should be free from 'German elements' and they consequently wanted to establish a decidedly contrasting, French style of music. It was for this reason that Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns set up the Societé Nationale de Musique in 1871, tasking it with supporting new French compositions. Successive composers were fascinated by new developments in the great French music tradition and experimented with modal alternatives and aspects of counterpoint. Compositional clarity was expected to express the simple but poetic relationship between music and text, drawing on graceful melodic lines and a Renaissance-like serenity of expression.