Gambini / Torre / Mingozzi - 8 Chamber Romances - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In his 80s, Jean Françaix (1912-1997) supervised this 1996 Dutch album of four pieces for varied forces, writing the engaging booklet notes and performing with undimmed skill in the Divertimento which he wrote back in 1953 for the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. As he notes, the title is somewhat ironic for those who play it 'if it is InchdivertingInch to listen to, it is not at all so to play it and requires great virtuosity.' Le Colloque des deux Perruches (The Dialogue of Two Parakeets) is a modern classic of the repertoire for two flutes a six-movement dialogue opening with a fluttering, swooping Allegrissimo, followed by a melancholy little Larghetto. Smiles and laughter are never far away in Françaix's music and the mood brightens with a darting Scherzando. The fifth movement is another plaintive Larghetto, with the parakeets in earnest conversation. As a 22-year-old composer of already remarkable fluency, Françaix composed the String Trio for the Trio Pasquier, who went on to play it in over a thousand concerts an inimitably bustling, weightless piece in four movements enclosing a wistful Andante and rounding off with one of those Françaix tunes that turns round in the listener's head for days afterwards. The ten-minute Cantate de Méphisto sets a text by Paul Valéry according to the composer, 'This 'Méphisto' is terribly authentic, cunning, subversive and perverse.' The devil wheedles and beguiles in a lyric parlando, accompanied by a string ensemble, spiced by the irony and satire of his operas and comedies such as Le diable boiteux, his first work for the stage. Valéry's text is printed in the booklet. Françaix's music features in countless compilations here is an authoritatively performed opportunity to immerse yourself in his world for 'une heure exquise'.

In 2014, Toccata Classics released a first CD of piano music by Edinburgh composer Charles O'Brien (1882-1968). The O'Brien rediscovery continues with his most important work, his only symphony. Powerful and lyrical by turn, O'Brien's Symphony in f (1922), a full-scale Romantic score in the Mendelssohn and Brahms tradition with an Elgarian awareness, is coupled with his Walter Scott-inspired overture Ellangowan, a resplendent work with a big, memorable Scottish tune. Paul Mann is a regular guest-conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, and the Far East.

The light and airy chamber-scaled divertimenti on this recording were composed in London in the early 1720s. They must have been among the first works with which Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) sought to make an impression on the discerning audiences and business-minded entrepreneurs who, at the time, were instrumental to a music-rich environment that made the city one of the main centers of European culture. It is perhaps to the detriment of his posthumous reputation that Bononcini became known as Handel's direct rival for the favor of London's musical public the rivalry between the two men was even immortalized in a piece of satirical doggerel which popularized the English expression 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'. In fact these divertimenti scored a popular success as soon as they were published; so much so that these harpsichord transcriptions were quickly produced - and then republished two decades later, when they appeared as Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin, placing them in direct competition with the collection of works under the same name by Handel. The divertimenti are three- and four-movement works designed not to place any great strain upon the listener's attention the longest movement here lasts barely three minutes. Even the slow movements are simple arias, originally conceived with a high melody instrument in mind - violin or transverse flute - and conforming to a serene and courtly character. By and large, however, they are filled with lively, dance-like quick movements, cheerful in temperament even when the tonality is minor, as it is in half the divertimenti. This is the debut album on Brilliant Classics for the harpsichordist Giovanni Paganelli.