A Touch of Romany

A very nice programme of music for piano and violin by Ravel and Enescu put together by violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Peter Nagy. Ravel and Enescu were friends in Paris and the concept of the programme to some extent relies on the French penchant for the exotic influence in amongst the normal cool Gallic purity of their music. The perceived exotic influence here is the gypsy influence but the counterpoint to that is that Enescu shied away from what he saw as the kitsch of many gypsy representations of the time, preferring to stress what he saw as the true Romanian folk music in his compositions in much the same way as Bartok did with Hungary. The two pieces featured by Enescu are Impressions d'Enfance and Sonata Number 3 for violin and piano, the latter subtitled "pour le caractere populaire roumain". The Ravel pieces are Sonate Posthume, so called because it was not published until after his death despite being an early composition, and the familiar showpiece Tzigane. Kavakos and Nagy are a regular perfoming duo and play superbly throughout.