Artur Pizarro performs Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto with Bamberger Symphoniker directed by Thomas Rösner, alongside Poulenc’s Sinfonietta and two rare, glittering gems from Charles Koechlin. This release is a coproduction with Bayerischer Rundfunk.
Following the success of Artur Pizarro’s recordings of Rachmaninoff’s Complete Piano Music on Odradek, hailed in Gramophone as “courageous and poetic” and praised by BBC Music Magazine for his “dazzling finger dexterity”, the “poet amongst pianists” returns with Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. The last of Poulenc’s concertos, this work is jaunty and playful whilst exuding an irresistible Romanticism. Poulenc’s Sinfonietta is a full-scale symphony in all but name, its self-deprecating title a reflection of the composer’s sense of humour and the work’s colourful, urbane character.
Charles Koechlin is best known for his vast orchestral Jungle Book cycle, but was a prolific composer of tone poems on an array of themes. Both Vers la voûte étoilée, Op. 129 and Sur les flots lointains, Op. 130 date from 1933, and both were published posthumously in 1996. Vers la voûte étoilée (‘Towards the vault of stars’) creates a sense of awe and mystery, reflecting Koechlin’s early ambition to become an astronomer. In the elegiac Sur les flots lointains (’On the distant waves’), Koechlin makes use of a melody composed by American composer, Catherine Murphy Urner.
The Bamberger Symphoniker has caught the world’s attention as an orchestra of depth and imagination, its BBC Proms 2019 performance praised in The Times as “stunning… idiomatic, impassioned, blazing with energy and power… virtuosically played, and enthrallingly pictorial.” The orchestra is directed on this album by the prolific and versatile Viennese conductor, Thomas Rösner.