Albert Roussel Trois pieces op 49 Janica Hristova

Albert Roussel - Trois pieces Op 49 (1933) pour piano
Performed by Bulgarian pianist Janica Hristova, May 2007 in Amsterdam

ALBERT ROUSSEL (1869 - 1937) French composer. Born in Tourcoing, France, Roussel's earliest interest was not in music but mathematics. He spent a time in the French Navy, and in 1889 and 1890 he served on the crew of the frigate Iphigénie. These travels affected him artistically, as many of his musical works would reflect his interest in far off, exotic places (the Near East and China).
After resigning from the Navy in 1894 he began to study music seriously with Eugène Gigout, then continuing his studies until 1908 at the Schola Cantorum (one of his teachers there was Vincent D'Indy). While studying, he was also busy teaching; his students included Eric Satie, Edgard Varèse and Bohuslav Martinů.
During World War I he served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. Following the war, he bought a summer house in Normandy, where he devoted most of his time to composition.
Roussel was by temperament a classicist. While his early work is strongly influenced by impressionism, he eventually found a personal style which was more formal in design, with a strong rhythmic drive, and with a more distinct liking for functional tonality than is evident in the work of his more famous contemporaries (for instance Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky). Roussel's training at the Schola Cantorum, with its emphasis on rigorous academic models such as Palestrina and Bach, left its mark on his matur style, which is characterized by contrapuntal textures. While he has been criticized for his heavy orchestrational style, that may be due to an expected similarity to the subtle and nuanced style of his countrymen, an aesthetic which he did not fully share; compared to the lush German romantic orchestral tradition, it could hardly be called heavy at all.
Roussel was also interested in jazz and wrote a piano-vocal composition entitled Jazz dans la nuit, which makes an interesting contrast to some of the other jazz-inspired compositions by French composers at the same time (compare it, for example, with the second movement of the Ravel Violin Sonata, or Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde).

TROIS PIECES Opus 49 for piano
Toccata, Valse lent, Scherzo et trio
Dedicated to Robert Casadesus
The work that immediately precedes the Trois pieces in Roussel's oeuvre is the opera-bouffe, Le testament de la tante Caroline, a typically lighthearted French romp. Some of the feeling of that work carries over into the Trois pieces, which is grand old dance hall music.
The Trois pieces differ from Roussel's typical mature output in that there is no slow middle movement. Instead we have three short, fast pieces with a modern, jaunty feel to them. The second piece has a middle section that sounds as though it could come out of a dance hall; the third piece has a touch of the delightful "introspective" Roussel commonly found in his slow movements.

Category:

Music

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• Albert
• Roussel
• Trois
• pieces
• French
• composer
• Janica
• Yanica
• Hristova
• Bulgarian
• pianist

[NOSEhow2LIV]

Beautiful, lively & stylish playing. I love vocal & orchestral Roussel, but his piano music never made an impression till now. Most enjoyable.

[hymntonight]

This is some good music! Should be played more. It's very pianistic and will appeal to more pianists if they only knew of it.

[scriabin007]

interessting piano music by A. Roussel! very good played....

[stephenjoeagi]

Revisiting this beautiful performance by Janica, I feel that she should be getting ready for the next Cliburn International Competition.

[pianopat]

Absolutely beautiful playing, and thank you for sharing this little known music.

[stephenjoeagi]

Bravo. Beautifully played. Very French music, composed by another famous French ambulance driver during the 1st World war. (The other of course being being Ravel). This is the kind of music I would like and hope to hear in a recital. Janica Hristova is excellent especially recorded on a concert piano.