Mauro Cecchin - Le Partitions Oubliées Piano Music II '2024

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 1, Léger et fantasque
02. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 2, Triste et doux - Lent (Dans le Sstyle d'une
berceuse populaire)
03. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 3, Assez lent mais doux et allant
04. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 4, Champêtre - Alla breve - Très rythmé
05. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 5, Sur le nom de ronsard - Lent et recueilli
06. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 6, Très léger et assez vif
07. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 7, Très lent
08. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 8, Simplement
09. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 9, Avec fougue (Vite)
10. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 10, Energique et assez sauvage
11. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 11, Très lent - Gravement expressif
12. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 12, Vif - Doux et fluide
13. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 13, Allant et simple, doux et tendre
14. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 14, Mouvement de valse (assez animé)
15. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 15, Pas trop vite - Nerveusement rythmé (dans
le goût espagnol)
16. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 16, Pas vite - Elégamment - Intime
17. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 17, Très vite et très brusque
18. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 18, Monotone et lointain
19. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 19, Allant, simplet et balancé
20. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 20, Lent et grave
21. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 21, Joyeux et avec entrain (vif)
22. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 22, Naïvement (Dans le style ancien)
23. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 23, Rude et bien scandé (mouvement de
bourée)
24. 24 Préludes, Op. 5: No. 24, Doux et tranquille
25. Toccata, Op. 40

Robert Casadesus was, and still is, the best-known representative of a family of
professional musicians, among whom there are several notable figures who
achieved international and lasting fame. His ancestry came from Catalunya, and
his grandfather, Luis, had a talent for music, though life circumstances
prevented him from developing this gift into a profession. This missed
opportunity, however, led Luis to wish for his children a future as musicians.
His family was numerous: thirteen children, nine of whom lived up to adulthood;
of these, all but one were musicians. One of them was Robert senior, father of
the protagonist of this Da Vinci Classics album; he had a successful career in
the performing arts, and became the director of the French Theatre in New York
City.
His son Robert showed musical gifts at an early age, and his grandfather Luis
would have wished him to become a violinist; however, the child was inclined to
the piano, and he received his first piano lessons from his aunts. Soon,
however, he needed a more qualified teaching, and was welcomed in the class of
Isidore Philipp, the most famous and celebrated piano teacher of the time. Young
Robert caught the attention of such a great composer as Gabriel Fauré, who
congratulated him warmly; and of Lucien Capet, the founder of the eponymous
quartet, in which two of Robert’s uncles also played. Still another
uncle, Marius, who was close in age to his nephew Robert, enjoyed playing duos
for violin and piano with him, and they toured together extensively also in the
following years.
At the Conservatory of Paris, where Casadesus was studying under Louis
Diémer, he met another young musician, pianist Gabrielle (Gaby)
L’Hôte, who was to become his fiancée, his wife, and a lifelong
partner in piano duos. Their mutual love and artistic understanding were
remarkable; they made a very happy couple and family, which was pervaded by
music. Both did maintain their activity as soloists, in varying degrees, but
they also loved playing together; later, their duo would become a trio, when
their son Jean joined them occasionally. They played existing works for piano
trio (such as Mozart’s Triple Concerto), but also works written expressly
by Robert, who had developed noteworthy skills as a composer, as this recording
amply demonstrates. As we will shortly see, however, the love for music and for
each other which inspired the members of this family was to be profoundly tried
by unexpected circumstances.
The ”First Family of the Piano”, as they were introduced in a
documentary of 1967, was in fact to be destroyed by Jean’s death just
five years later (1972); Robert and Gaby’s son died in a car accident
ensuing, by utter unluck, from his taking a car after having missed a plane.
This loss was fatal to Robert, who died not even nine months later. Gaby, who
survived them by many years, consecrated the remainder of her long life to the
preservation of their memory, organizing concerts, recordings, competitions, and
overseeing the publication of her husband’s works. She would die once her
mission had been accomplished, i.e. shortly after the centenary of her
husband’s birth.
Before this tragical epilogue, however, the Casadesus lived a happy and fruitful
life. The beginnings of Robert’s piano career took place under the aegis
of none other than Maurice Ravel, who was deeply impressed upon hearing him
play, and who rightly guessed that Robert’s musical intelligence was a
composer’s. The friendship between Robert and Ravel was a deep and
lasting one, and, obviously, involved their artistry. Casadesus recorded
Ravel’s complete piano works; at first he recorded some of them on piano
rolls, in London, and, later, on disks. The two musicians also played together
in public, performing four-hand piano pieces and alternating at the piano chair
for solo pieces.
In 1934, Ravel was appointed General Director of the American Conservatoire of
Fontainebleau, where Robert’s former teacher, Isidore Philipp, had taught
for years. The Conservatoire had been founded by another of Robert’s many
uncles, Francis, together with Walter Damrosch. It had been the result of an
experiment which had happened during World War I; in 1917, Francis Casadesus had
given lessons to the musicians of the American Army, and Damrosch, impressed by
the quality of his teaching, had wished for it to remain available to Americans
when peace, thankfully, returned. This reality provided France in general, but
specifically the Casadesus tribe, with a powerful foothold in America, where
Robert was to perform regularly in the most important theatres and halls and
under the baton of conductors such as Arturo Toscanini, Dimitri Mitropoulos,
Sergey Koussevitzky or Bruno Walter.
Beyond Robert’s career, America was to become crucial for the family as a
haven in the turmoil of the war years. In 1940, Robert’s entire family
(which by then included his wife Gaby and his sons Jean and Guy) was in the US
for one of their yearly concert tours; as Europe was becoming increasingly
unsafe due to World War II, they decided to remain in the States, where Robert
recreated the Fontainebleau Conservatory on American soil. They would remain in
the USA for six years, moving around the country as work opportunities presented
themselves; the family’s size was also to increase during those years,
with the birth of a daughter, Thérèse. In America, they became acquainted
with, and befriended, some famous European exiles, including, for instance,
physicist Albert Einstein, who loved to play chamber music and frequently
performed as a violinist with Gaby. Robert, instead, would form a stable duo
with Zino Francescatti, one of the greatest violinists of the era, with whom he
felt a deep musical syntony. They played extensively together, both in America
and later in Europe, and they produced recordings which made history.
The Casadesus family also befriended Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Darius
Milhaud, as well as Leonard Bernstein and Vladimir Horowitz during their stay in
the States.
Once the war was over, they returned to their homeland; here, they had to face
one further, serious problem, i.e. the illness of their daughter who caught
poliomyelitis. The family bravely helped her, showing that unity which always
marked their life together. In the post-war years, Robert would continue his
activity as a solo and chamber music performer, as an acclaimed and sought-for
teacher, and as a composer.
This aspect of his musicianship is much less known than it deserves, and for
this reason an endeavour such as the current one is a welcome initiative for
preserving the memory of, and disseminate knowledge about, the creative output
of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century. Casadesus left an
impressive portfolio of 69 opus numbers, comprising large-scale works such as
symphonies (seven!), concertos for one, two, or three pianos, but also for solo
violin, cello, and lute, and numerous chamber music works, along with a
substantial portion of works for piano alone. Among these, we may cite the
Etudes, Sonatas, and the Cadenzas written for Piano Concertos by Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven.
Robert Casadesus joined a series of musicians (including some of the greatest of
all times, such as Chopin and Debussy) who completed one or more series of
twenty-four Preludes, openly referencing the two volumes of twenty-four Preludes
and Fugues each composed by Bach in the eighteenth century and famously named
Well-Tempered Clavier. Casadesus’ set was completed in 1924, and it
attracted the attention of both pianists and critics. Half a century later, in
1976, critic Henk van Overeem would express his opinion about them with the
following words: “The compositions that Casadesus entrusted to the paper
bear witness to a musician’s spirit and French finesse and are, on the
whole, perfectly suited to his ‘own’ instrument, the piano. This
was clearly demonstrated by the. […] Dedicated to Maurice Ravel, these
pieces combine the playfulness of Poulenc with the harmonic inventiveness of
Milhaud or Honegger”.
In fact, Casadesus poured into this collection his own expertise as a concert
pianist, his inventiveness as a composer, and his knowledge of the repertoire
and style of other composers, both contemporaries of him and of the past. The
listener will find here a plethora of suggestive stimuli, which reveal both the
musicality of Casadesus’ muse, with their gently floating lines, and his
brilliant virtuosity. The various indications and titles reveal the variety and
diversity of the composer’s sources of inspiration; they include, for
instance, pieces labelled as “folk lullaby”, “waltz”,
“in the Spanish gusto”, “in the old style”,
“bourrée”, etc., along with other fascinating tempo and
expression indications which are frequently reminiscent of the French
Impressionism.
His Toccata op. 40 is from a decidedly later time; it was written in 1946 for
Jean, and would be premiered four years later by his wife Gaby. This piece has
enjoyed great popularity, also because it was a required work at the Casadesus
International Piano Competition. If the Préludes echoed most notably those by
Chopin and Debussy, this Toccata openly references other eponymous works such as
Schumann’s, Prokofev’s, and Ravel’s. The
“toccata” style in fact is represented by the rapid succession of a
perpetuum mobile made of strings of semiquavers, but is far more than a mere
technical exercise: its fame is well-deserved as it is a masterful piece which
attracts and conquers players and listeners alike.

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