Composer: Lili Boulanger, Claude Achille Debussy, Edward William Elgar, Leoš Janáček
Performer: Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Delphian
Catalogue: DCD34288
Release: 2023
Size: 1.11 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Janáček: Violin Sonata
01. I. Con moto
02. II. Ballada: Con moto
03. III. Allegretto
04. IV. Adagio
05. Boulanger: Nocturne
06. Boulanger: Cortège for violin & piano
Debussy: Violin Sonata in G minor
07. I. Allegro vivo
08. II. Intermède: Fantasque et léger
09. III. Finale: Très animé
10. Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps
Elgar: Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82
11. I. Allegro
12. II. Romance: Andante
13. III. Allegro, non troppo
The 1910s were a period of extraordinary turbulence and change. Revolutions and war left monarchies and empires fallen and the social order irreversibly altered. The music on this album emerges from various points in that eventful decade, but all of it records vividly a world that was shortly to vanish forever – a world to which the year 1919 was already a coda. Indeed, the pieces chosen by Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt for their second Delphian recording also speak from a decade of musical endings. Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger both died in 1918, two extraordinary careers cut short early; Baker and Lebhardt’s programme includes some of their last works. Edward Elgar lived on for another fifteen years, but wrote little more to match the four major compositions which emerged from his pen in 1918 and 1919. Leoš Janácek, by contrast, was about to enter an astonishing Indian summer of creativity; his violin sonata stands on the cusp, inspired by Janácek’s hopes that the war might lead to independence for his beloved Czech lands.