Couleurs

Artur Pizarro (piano)

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.

Koechlin:
 Sur les flots lointains, Op. 130
 Vers la voûte étoilée

Poulenc:
 Piano Concerto
 Sinfonietta

"The album opens with Poulenc’s marvellous Sinfonietta (1947-8) and closes, intriguingly, with a pair of Koechlin tone poems. Both date from 1933 but neither have any overt links to Poulenc. They make a finely contrasted Impressionist diptych: Vers la voûte étoilée, with its sense of the immensity of space, and the more winsome Sur les flots lointains, based on a tune by his student Catherine Urner. Both are beautifully played by the Bamberg SO under Thomas Rösner."
International Piano - February 2020

"Pizarro ensures the graceful aspects of his pianism are to the fore in the Piano Concerto, though here, as with the Sinfonietta, some detail is clouded by the resonant acoustic. The colours may not quite blend, but the verve of these engaging performances still emerges."
BBC Music Magazine - April 2020 **** (Performance) / *** (Recording)