Congratulations to Kerstin Allvin, whose recording of Jacques de la Presle's Le Jardin Mouillé has made it to number 1 of the French Radio Classique charts!
You can download the recording from Virginmegaclassique.fr, or buy the whole album from Amazon. "Sonate et autres pièces de chambre" is a programme exclusively of de la Presle's music, with the Detroit-Woodwind Chamber ensemble (Polymnie POL590452).
Devotee of Fauré, Ravel, Debussy and Poulence, Jacques de la Presle was part of the French musical opposition to Wagner and Stravinsky, and of course it is from this French impressionist period that much of the most important harp solo repertoire comes. De la Presle's elegant, refined music, privileging melody, is always focused on the beautiful. Of his work, de la Presle remarked: "Je n'ai jamais rien écrit qui ne fut pour moi un besoin impérieux de le faire. Je crois que tout artiste écrit pour s'élever au-dessus de lui-même. C'est ce qui est le plus difficile en art." ("I have never written anything that I did not feel I absolutely had to write. I believe that every artist writes to transcend himself. It is this which is the most difficult in art.")
Le Jardin Mouille is inspired by Henri de Régnier's poem of the same name, where the rain-soaked garden eventually "s'égoutte/Dans l'ombre que j'ai faite en moi" ("drains all its rain at once into the shadow I have made within me.")
Meanwhile, in England Four Girls Four Harps have released their second CD, Fireworks and Fables, which also features a lot of French impressionist music, and is also doing well in the media. It was David Mellor's CD of the week on Classic FM at the start of June, was featured in Classic FM Magazine (which thought that, had the CD been released a few weeks earlier, it would have had a good chance at the Classical Brit Awards), and was played on BBC Radio 2 as well. You have yet another chance to hear it this Sunday from 9PM on the Magazine Show.
