Search - Multi Interpretes :: Ibert-Escales-Histoires

J. F. A. IBERT's String Quartet...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 06/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

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Nice issue of le Collection Musique Fançaise on Accord, this disc represents virtually a "best of" Ibert, unfortunately without the Saxophone Chamber Concerto, however, and also not including Ibert's fascinating and sympathetic symphonic poem "La Ballade de la geôle de Reading" based upon Wilde's swan-song.



Includes of course the popular neo-Debussyan "Escales--Ports of Call" written on tour of the Mediterranean Sea, Ibert having won the Prix de Rome in 1919. The European General War was over, and all survivors were celebrating life, life, life--that ephemeral thing. Ibert (b.1890) must have missed the slaughter by a hairsbreadth...

The Escales are three brief but enthusiastic orchestral pieces (not over :06mins duration), highly coloured with the southern sun, and brilliantly orchestrated.



Disc also features numerous little pieces for chamber ensemble: the Divertissement (14 solo instruments); Pièces Brèves (wind quintet); and the Entr'acte (flute and harp).



Ibert's Histories pour Piano (of 1922) is a set of eight characteristic pièces-poems also in the neo-Debussyan manner, and also all brief of not more than :03mins duration.



Lastly, the pièce de résistance, Ibert's little-known String Quartet. Written at Antibes in 1942 (i.e., during WWII, with northern France under German occupation), this is an exquisite work of purely abstract music. Not long at ~:19mins duration, the Quartet follows the classic four movement form with allegro, andante, presto, and allegro. The aesthetic inspiration and string part writing are superb, making this one of the finest French Quartets of the period--pace, Darius Milhaud.

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Jacques Ibert - Persée et Andromède, Las Ballade de la Geôle de Reading, Sarabande pour Dulcinée

Saxophone Concertos

Music for Saxophone and Orchestra

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