Fernando de Lucia - De Lucia, Fernando : Recordings 1902-1925 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Most of the songs on this record were composed in the first half of the 20th century, not a few between the two wars. This has been an era surprisingly neglected by singers, yet many English composers produced some of their best vocal works during this period. Recently the combination of voice, clarinet and piano has proved more and more popular with composers, but it would appear that with Holbrooke's Tame Cat, he must be counted amongst the first of English composers to write for this medium. Tame Cat is a setting by Joseph Holbrooke to words by Ezra Pound. This remarkable song, composed in 1923 is the fifth of his 'Six Socialist Songs' a set fully redolent of the times. It is paired with works by Gustav Holst, Arthur Bliss, Alan Bush, Benjamin Britten, and more.

An obscure corner of the French Baroque illuminated the only available recording of the sole extant collection by a Parisian organist and composer. About Pierre-Thomas Dufour, almost nothing is now known for certain beyond his death in Paris, on 30 December 1786, and the publication in 1770 of this collection of harpsichord pieces bearing his name. He probably wrote a good deal else, both for harpsichord and organ, given that the title page of the collection informs us that Dufour was organist of the Eglise de Saint-Jean-en-Grève and the Eglise Saint-Laurent, both in Paris. The collection is divided between dances (gigues, courantes, allemandes and musettes), and stylised evocations indicated by their titles after the fashion of Couperin 'The Blacksmiths', 'The Doves' and so on. In his booklet essay, the harpsichordist Fernando de Luca observes that these tone-poems are no less vividly coloured and dramatized than contemporary canvases by Boucher and Watteau. There are also two self-contained solo concertos for the instrument, in B flat and E flat major. Cast in the conventional three movements, the concertos share a grandeur of spirit with the more stately of the individual pieces such as 'La Triomphante' and 'La Sincere'. Despite his obscurity, there is no reason to regard Dufour as a 'lesser' composer on the evidence of this slender collection, especially now that it is recorded in it's entirety. A portrait emerges through it of Dufour himself, as a cultivated and cosmopolitan musician, well aware of contemporary trends not only in French music but further abroad, especially in the Italianate dash of the two concertos. The collection closes with a spectacular Carillon in imitation of the church-bells which rang throughout Paris (and every other European city) on the quarter-hour. Fernando de Luca has accumulated an impressive discography for Brilliant Classics, i

Another discovery unearthed by Brilliant Classics, and another name to add to the library of French-Baroque masters, from the voraciously inquisitive mind and virtuoso hands of Fernando de Luca. Who was Hubert Renotte (1704-1745)? He was born and died in the Belgian city of Liege, and for the last decade of his life served as the titular organist of the cathedral there. Accordingly he wrote a good deal of church music, which remains as overlooked as his output for keyboard. This in itself encompasses not only organ music but the distinctively Franco-Italian style of the harpsichord pieces presented for the first time on record in the present album.The C major Suite is launched in dazzling style with 'Les Roulades et Harpeggio', living up to it's title with cascades of sequences up and down the keyboard. Renotte must have been quite the technician, as well as a composer of great taste and refinement. Perhaps he had a sense of humour, too, to judge from the third movement of the suite 'Les Bagatelles Ou Les Folies de Liege & Menuet en Suite Des Bagatelles'. Again, true to the title, Renotte presents a series of sharply etched, fantastical sketches, which we might now hear as proto-Beethovenian in their oblique and disconcerting wit. The Suite concludes with, literally, 'Le Torrent', another sparkling cataract of notes. Whether or not Renotte ever intended them to be played in sequence this way - the music survives in manuscript, and there is no sign that they were published - the other pieces are also gathered up by key signature. There are 17 such pieces in D major, including a 'Pastorella' whose charming character belongs to the association of the key with country manners. On this new recording, Fernando de Luca plays a modern copy by Claudio Capone of a Blanchet harpsichord from 1754. While Jos van Immerseel recorded an LP-length selection of Renotte's works, this i