Chausson • Enescu • Ravel

Chausson: Poème; Ravel: Tzigane; Enescu: Caprice Roumain

David Grimal (violin);

Les Dissonances

La Dolce Volta LDV 97 54:03 mins

The plan of this recording is simple but meaningful. We start with late 19th-century France, move on to a mixture of France and Hungary/romania and end with Romania entire. Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra which, in its gentle melancholy, has fin de siècle written all over it, is perhaps the nearest he came in his short life to being a great composer. The harmony, while clearly deriving from that of Franck, is never heavy-footed and coalesces beautifully with the work’s long melodies. Ravel’s Tzigane, which adopts the slow/fast (lassú/ friss) form of the Hungarian csárdás, was inspired by the playing of the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’arányi, which he followed up by studying Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies.

There are melodies here, but Ravel cunningly intertwines them with ‘exotic’ slides and dissonances and much of the piece’s excitement lies in the way our brain untangles the mix. But, as Grimal notes, the result is by the composer’s admission much more Ravel than Hungary.

Finally, the all-romanian piece is Enescu’s Caprice Roumain. Enescu finished only the first of the four movements, the composer Cornel

T ranu orchestrating the other three and completing the fourth. I wish I could agree with Grimal that ‘It’s a splendid piece of music.’ After three listenings, I still hanker for something, during its 28 minutes, in the shape of a tune rather than virtuosic gestures. Of the violinist’s calibre there is no doubt whatever and he is as much at home in the Chausson as in the rest of his programme. Roger Nichols PERFORMANCE ★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★