Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Concert de Chausson – Quintette de Vierne (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:07 minutes | 2,56 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical
Pianist Eric Le Sage, often praised for his ‘precious, noble and tonally subtle playing’ (Rondo), dedicates himself here to two unusual chamber music works from the French late Romantic period that are rarely heard in the concert hall. There is the Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, op. 21 by Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), a string sextet with a particularly virtuoso violin part (the dedicatee was the Belgian violin legend Eugene Ysaÿe) – which is indeed what its title suggests: a violin concerto with chamber music accompaniment. And the equally rare Piano Quintet op. 42 by Louis Vierne (1870-1937), who was primarily known for his organ music, but who wrote a touching and melancholy chamber music work here – out of personal sadness, as his son was killed in the First World War. Eric Le Sage is supported by Daishin Kashimoto, long-time concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, on the violin and the Schumann Quartet in Chausson’s work, and by Yuri Zhislin (viola) and Claudio Bohórquez (cello) in Vierne’s work, alongside Kashimoto and Natalia Lomeiko (violin).
Daishin Kashimoto and Eric Le Sage as exceptional chamber music partners are known for their chamber music performances around the world, especially in Japan at the Le Pont International Music Festival Ako and Himeji held every year in early autumn, and in 2023-24 at the “Schumann & Brahms In 2023-24, the “Schumann & Brahms Violin Sonata Cycle” will also be realized. In terms of recordings, the partnership is growing stronger and stronger, with Schumann’s Piano Quintet in 2009, Fauré’s two violin sonatas in 2012, and chamber music albums by Korngold and Berg in 2018 and Nino Rota in 2020.
This album, recorded just this May in Belgium, is Daishin Kashimoto’s first recording for Sony Classical in 17 years, since the release of the Brahms Violin Concerto in 2007, and features two of the great chamber music works produced in France in the late 19th/early 20th century, Chausson and Vierne. The recording features two of the greatest French chamber music works of the late 19th/early 20th century, Chausson and Vierne. The quartet performs with the Schumann Quartet in Chausson, and with Natalia Romeyko, Yuri Gislin, and Claudio Borquez in Vierne.
Chausson’s “Concerte,” premiered in Brussels in 1892, was described as “one of the most important and most interesting of the various musical compositions of recent years,” with its unconventional arrangement of solo violin and piano, and the addition of a string quartet. Chausson was influenced by the German Romanticism that prevailed in France at the time, and he was particularly interested in his own path beyond his devotion to Wagner, taking French classical composers such as Couperin and Rameau as models. The entire work is performed on three tones. The three notes (D, A, and E) that run through the entire piece like a motif were influenced by the cyclic form that Franck was known for.
Tracklist:
1. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Chausson: Ernest Chausson – Concert pour violon, piano et quatuor à cordes en ré majeur Op. 21: I – Décidé (14:21)
2. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Chausson: Ernest Chausson – Concert pour violon, piano et quatuor à cordes en ré majeur Op. 21: II – Sicilienne (04:15)
3. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Chausson: Ernest Chausson – Concert pour violon, piano et quatuor à cordes en ré majeur Op. 21: III – Grave (10:01)
4. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Chausson: Ernest Chausson – Concert pour violon, piano et quatuor à cordes en ré majeur Op. 21: IV – Finale (10:55)
5. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Vierne: Louis Vierne – Quintette pour piano, 2 violons, alto et violoncelle Op. 42: I – Poco lento (10:57)
6. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Vierne: Louis Vierne – Quintette pour piano, 2 violons, alto et violoncelle Op. 42: II – Larghetto sostenuto (12:08)
7. Eric Le Sage & Daishin Kashimoto – Vierne: Louis Vierne – Quintette pour piano, 2 violons, alto et violoncelle Op. 42: III – Maestoso (09:27)
