New Kids On The Block

This BBC Music mag cover disk brings me back to the point where I began this blog just under a year ago, completing the backlog and just leaving the new issues to come to be considered in their turn. This one goes under the title French Chamber Classics and is one of those featuring BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists. The disk begins with Debussy's Syrinx, a short virtuosic piece for solo flute played here by Sharon Bezaly and occupying the same sound world as the Prelude De L'Apres-Midi. Bezaly is the coming voice of the flute in classical music and negotiates the piece wonderfully. Next up is Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major played by violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cedric Tiberghien. One of my favourite chamber pieces, full of melody and invention and again the young performers are up to the task of presenting it in its' best light. Written as a wedding present for Ysaye, the glowing finale is an appropriate gift to a great violinist at a time of happiness. The least successful works on the disk follow, tenor Andrew Kennedy ( accompanied by pianist Julius Drake who is just a little too mature for the Young Artists scheme but makes a guest appearance ) singing songs by Faure. Kennedy is in good voice and the songs are passionate but his French isn't yet that of a native and he doesn't seem so comfortable as he is in English repertoire. The disk concludes with Tiberghien again, solo this time playing Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. Based on lurid prose poems about a seductive nymph, a corpse swinging on a gibbet and a malevolent dwarf, the three piano pieces are full of impressionistic and occasional pre-echoes of jazz and it is obviously repertoire that tiberghien has grown up with.