Marie Jaëll - 18 Pièces pour piano d’après la lecture de Dante

[britishcomposer]

This Evening, WDR 3, 8 pm:

http://www.wdr3.de/musik/kammermusikbeiwdr3/funkhauskonzerte102.html

[Mark Thomas]

Rats! Missed it. Did you record it by any chance, Mathias?

[Mark Thomas]

First of all, thanks to Semi.Serio for uploading the broadcast. This really is remarkable music, not at all what I was expecting from the Marie Jaëll of those two splendid echt-romantic piano concertos. These 18 pieces, grouped into three sets of six each (Ce qu'on entend dans l'Enfer, Ce qu'on entend dans le Purgatoire and Ce qu'on entend dans le Paradis) are really quite impressionistic, reminding me very much of Debussy, although there is the odd Lisztian gesture to be heard too. In the first two sets in particular it's primarily music driven by mood and not melody, and there are some powerful, sometimes uncomfortable and unrelenting, passages. As one might expect, the six pieces in the third set are on the whole rather more more lyrical, and altogether gentler and more contemplative. I do recommend this work to the curious, it demonstrates that Jaëll was a seriously talented composer, capable of writing music which was at the cutting edge in its time (1894). The 18 Pièces pour piano d'après la lecture de Dante lasts 68 minutes, shorn of the German narration which linked the pieces in the original broadcast.

By the way, in Semi.Serio's post only three of the six numbers in the first set are listed. The complete set (as actually played in the broadcast) is:

Ce qu'on entend dans l'Enfer:
  I. Poursuite
  II. Raillerie
  III. Appel
  IV. Dans les flammes
  V. Blasphèmes
  VI. Sabbat

[herrarte]

Mark,

Seems to me there are 19 piano pieces between the narrated ones. Unless track 5 (narrated for the first 2 minutes) is part of track 8?

Thanks for posting the titles for part 1.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm away from home now, and so can't check, but I do remember that one piece has a substantial pause mid way through. There are, though, definitely only 18 pieces in the set.