Composer: Alexandre Tansman
Performer: Maria Argentiero
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Piano Classics
Catalogue: PCL10260
Release: 2022
Size: 970 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Sonatine transatlantique
01. I. Fox trot
02. II. Spiritual – Blues
03. III. Charleston
Trois préludes en forme de blues
04. I. Lento cantabile
05. II. Moderato
06. III. Moderato
07. Tempo americano (from Sinfonia No.3 – piano transcription by the composer)
Le tour du monde en miniature
08. I. Coconut-Grove, Hollywood, California (USA)
09. II. Waikiki Beach of Honolulu, Hawaii (USA)
10. III. Complaint from Nikko, Japan
11. IV. The March of Birds in Shanghai (China)
12. V. Gongs in a Temple of Hong Kong
13. VI. The Philippine Islands
14. VII. The Snake Charmer in Singapore
15. VIII. The Monkeys in a Jungle of Penang, Malaysia
16. IX. The Bamboo Flute in a Forest of Bandoeng, Java (Indonesia)
17. X. The Gamelang in Bali, Wayang Shadow Puppetry (Indonesia)
18. XI. The White Elephants in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
19. XII. The Towers of Silence in Bombay (India)
20. XIII. The Night on the Nile
21. XIV. Port de Sollér, Balearic Islands (Haven of the Town of Sóller in Mallorca, Spain)
22. XV. Napoli (Italy)
Esquisses javanaises (Unpublished Manuscript)
23. I. Lento
24. II. Lento
25. III. Andante
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was born in Lodz, Poland, into a wealthy Jewish family of great culture. He spoke five languages and studied law and philosophy. His early compositions show experiments with atonality and 12-tone music. In 1919 he left Poland for Paris, where he settled permanently. Tansman: “I spent the first twenty years of my life in Poland. In regard to the importance of Slavic influence in my music, I can readily say that I followed the same path as Bartók or Manuel de Falla: folklore imaginé. I did not use popular themes per se. I used, however, their general melodic contour. This folklore remained strongly present in my musical sensitivity”.
One could say that Tansman had a similar approach to writing music as Chopin – namely to use folklore as source material to be transformed by his imagination, without actual quoting. In a similar vein he used the different traditions he encountered when travelling round the globe, no matter whether it was jazz, gamelan or Japanese music.
The Transatlantic Sonatina was the result of a 1927 trip to the US, where he discovered jazz. The opening Foxtrot mixes up Joplin and Gershwin, before an exquisite “Spiritual and Blues” and finally a swinging Charleston.
Tansman was a marvellous tune-smith with a Polish heritage but a French accent gained from his move to Paris in 1919. There he absorbed elements of cabaret, music-hall, café, jazz and fashionable dances, blurring boundaries between artistic and popular music. The Trois préludes en forme de blues pick up the stylistic theme hinted at in the middle movement of the sonata. Le tour du monde en miniature (1933) affirms Tansman’s status as among the most cosmopolitan composers of the 20th century: a whirlwind 15-movement suite that sets out among the coconut groves of California and ends up dancing a tarantella in Naples, having stopped off in far-eastern jungles and temples along the way.
Maria Argentiero ends her uniquely compiled survey of Tansman’s piano music with a world premiere recording of the Esquisses javanaises (1945) – a set of three tone-pictures for the piano which returns to the central panels of the Tour de monde and their potent evocations of eastern culture from a western perspective.
Born in 1985, the Italian pianist Maria Argentiero gained an enthusiastic online following during lockdown with her streamed performances of repertoire from Haydn to Satie, Kapustin and beyond. She teaches in Pisa and specialises as a performer in quirkier voices from the past century such as Tansman. The booklet features a thorough profile of the composer and his piano music, plus an interview between Maria Argentiero and Marianne Tansman, the composer’s daughter, who recalls him as a “very loving but very anxious” father.