Recording Review
Jean Françaix
Piano Concertino; Les malheurs de Sophie;
Les bosquets de Cythère
Philippe Cassard piano
Ulster Orchestra
Thierry Fischer conductor
Hyperion CDA67384 (58 minutes: DDD)
Gramophone, May 2004
by Roger Nichols
Splendid playing, but in music that just doesn't hold the attention
The playing here is absolutely first-class: rhythmically taut, clear and bright in texture, with a wide range of dynamics, spaciously but not echoingly recorded. But even these virtues can't persuade me of the music’s value. The much lamented Michael Oliver on one occasion fell to wondering why the pieces by Françaix I objected to were precisely the ones he enjoyed most. I have no answer to that. Try as I may, I find that after about three minutes of pretty well any Françaix work my mind starts drifting.
The facture of his music is faultless: the harmonic sideslips would do credit to Prokofiev, and the orchestration ‘sounds’ in the same way Chabrier’s does – I’m aware that when Poulenc persuaded Françaix to orchestrate his Babar, he reckoned he had found ‘une très brillante solution’. But, I ask myself, what is it all for? In bulk, the determined perkiness loses its allure. Please not another glissando, another ‘funny’ bassoon, more ‘wake-up-at-the-back-there’ trumpets. The Piano Concertino is about my limit - or, I would say, his, since none of the four movements lasts longer than three minutes, and the interplay between piano and orchestra is a welcome structural support. I think I just have to confess to a deaf spot on this front, while warmly commending these performances to those listeners who are differently constituted.
Irish Times Thursday, 25 March 2004
by Michael Dervan
Although Jean Françaix was a composer with a light touch, a little of his music tended to go a long way. The composer seems to have understood this, for the three works here, a ballet, a miniature concerto, and a suite of waltzes, divide up into 21 movements with an average duration of under three minutes. Philippe Cassard is the nimble piano soloist in the best-known work, the 1934 Concertino, a frolicking and sentimental piece, four movements in under nine minutes, garbed in Françaix’s always effectively-coloured orchestration. The composer's style didn't change much over the years, so in their different ways, the 1935 ballet Les malheurs de Sophie and the 1946 suite Les bosquets de Cythère, offer the same clever mix of elegance and naughtiness, which Thierry Fischer and the Ulster Orchestra float with a light touch.