Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher - Louis Durey Melodies [CD]

Cat. no: MDG61323572
Format: CD
Barcode: 760623235721
Release Date: 13 Jun 2025
Genre: Classical

MDG's multi-award-winning Les Six anthology series showcases the entire spectrum of an epoch

This installment is dedicated to Louis Durey, the eccentric outsider of Le groupe des Six. Holger Falk's incredibly agile baritone and tremendous tonal range accompanied by Steffen Schleiermacher's sensitivity, verve and virtuosity on the piano yet again take the benchmark up a notch in art song excellence.

Hommage a Erik Satieis like an ironic theatre scene in a song: Charlie Chaplin makes an appearance, as well as screaming fish, eavesdropping elephants, some wellbehaved musicians practising diminished chords; even an enchanting virtuoso piano
cadenza... Musically, it is oriented towards Satie's Style depouille, with some rhythms
having wafted over from Stravinsky.

Louis Durey was the first French composer to study the music of Arnold Schoenberg intensively. In Deux Lieder Romatiques , based on poems by Heinrich Heine, Durey layers increasingly shrill chords which unfold above an inexorable E-flat pedal, which in their structure of fourths certainly seem like an echo of Schoenberg's music. 

In the song cycle Vergers set to Rilke's enigmatic poems, Durey goes harmonically and melodically far beyond his earlier compositions with enigmatic, ambiguous music reminiscent of Schoenberg, Messiaen, or even Philip Glass. The independence of the vocal part and the piano accompaniment is striking: both seem to move in separate harmonic and melodic worlds which only occasionally intersect.

Tracks: Durey: Le Bestiaire ou Cortege d'Orphee Op.17a / Six Madrigaux de Mallarme Op.22a / Verges - Sept poemes de Rilke Op.42 / Epigrammes de Theocrite Op.13 / Trois poemes de Petrone Op.15 / Hommage a Erik Satie / Chansons Basques Op.23 / Inscriptions sur un Oranger Op.16 / Deux Lieder Romantiques (Heinrich Heine) Op.20 / Deux Poemes d'Ho-chi-Minh Op.69