Composer: Béla Bartók, Claude Achille Debussy, Igor Stravinsky
Performer: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, François-Frédéric Guy
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Chandos
Catalogue: CHAN10863
Release: 2015
Size: 953 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Bartók: Két Kép (Two Pictures), Op. 10, Sz. 46, BB 59
01. I. Viragzas (In Full Flower)
02. II. A falu tanca (Village Dance)
Debussy: Jeux, L. 126, CD 133
03. I. Prelude
04. II. Du fond, à gauche, appraraissent deux jeunes filles craintives
05. III. Une des deux jeunes filles danse seule
06. IV. On aperçoit le jeune homme au fond, à gauche
07. V. Ils dansent ensemble
08. VI. Le jeune homme a suivi cette dernière danse par curiosite
09. VII. Dans l’emportement de leur danse, ils n’ont pas remarque
10. VIII. Pourtant, le jeune homme intervient en écartant leurs tetes
11. IX. Ils dansent désormais tous les trois
12. X. Une balle de tennis tombe à leurs pieds
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps, K. 15, Part I, Adoration of the Earth
13. Introduction
14. The Augurs of Spring – Dances of the Young Girls
15. Ritual of Abduction
16. Spring Rounds
17. Ritual of the River Tribes
18. Procession of the Sage
19. The Sage
20. Dance of the Earth
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps, K. 15, Part II, The Sacrifice
21. Introduction
22. Circles of the Young Girls
23. Glorification of the Chosen One
24. Evocation of the Ancestors
25. Ritual Action of the Ancestors
26. Sacrificial Dance
These two-piano transcriptions played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and François-Frédéric Guy renew our experience of three great orchestral works, each of which was premiered in 1913.
Bavouzet’s version of Jeux is, like any fine transcription, far more than a memento of the original. Not only the trills and tremolandos needed on the piano to maintain sustained notes and chords, but also the interplay between the pianists, lines and motifs bouncing between them, become active participants in an intimate music of undulant ambiguity, dream, and darkness.
‘In Full Flower’, the first of the Two Pictures by Bartók, is often taken as his most Debussian composition thanks to his exploration of new scales and harmonic worlds. However, in bringing out its luxuriant and blossoming Hungarian aspects, Zoltán Kocsis emphasises rather its fully Bartókian character, which Bavouzet has conveyed to wide critical praise. The two ‘pictures’ here provide a route from Debussy’s world of erotic reverie to Stravinsky’s of ancient ritual. The thundering and the bells of the two pianos in full and accurate fury make this version of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps hardly less forceful in the hands of these two dazzling and virtuosic pianists.