Composer: Arthur Lourié
Performer: Christian Erny
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: ARS Produktion
Catalogue: ARS38248
Release: 2018
Size: 152 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
5 Preludes fragiles, Op. 1
01. Prelude No. 1: Lento
02. Prelude No. 2: Calme, pas vite
03. Prelude No. 3: Tendre, pensif
04. Prelude No. 4: Affabile
05. Prelude No. 5: Modéré
06. Valse
2 Estampes, Op. 2
07. No. 1. Crépuscule d’un faune
08. No. 2. ‘Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent’
09. Intermezzo
10. Petite Suite in F Major
11. Gigue
12. Nocturne
8 Scenes of Russian Childhood
13. No. 6. Lullaby
Arthur Lourié (1892-1966) is one of the most important representatives of the Russian avant-garde, even though he unfortunately never received the appropriate attention due to emigration, among other things. While his early piano pieces were still linked to Skriabin’s late work, the composer soon developed completely new forms of musical discourse, including graphic notation.
Christian Erny assembled a roughly hour-long selection of works that offer a foray into the innovative and fascinating world of Arthur Lourié.
Despite his name’s faintly French appearance, Arthur Lourié was a Russian-born composer (born Naoum Izraïlevitch Louria) who died in the USA in 1966. A student of Glazunov at the Conservatory of St Petersburg until 1913, he quit the academic scene, reproaching it for its academicism, and followed his own path as an autodidact. His first works, some of which are presented here, still bear the double mark of late romanticism and Scriabin. Shortyle afterwards he would dip a toe into atonalism and and serialism, before jumping back out pretty quickly. After the Russian Revolution, his anti-academic positions saw him quickly appointed a professor of music, but Lourié quickly realised that things could only get worse, and he sought and won political asylum during a trip to Berlin in 1921. Shortly thereafter he set up in Paris, where he visited Stravinsky and took on board the latter’s influence, and his neoclassicism. In 1941 he left Paris and set up in New York, in Kossevitzky’s circle. Perhaps thought of as a stateless man, Lourié’s music has (still) not found the recognition that it deserves. It’s a safe bet that this album by Christian Erny, with works from all of the composer’s periods – from the Five Preludes Op. 1 of 1910 to the Little Suite in F of 1957 – will draw music-lovers’ attention to Lourié.