French label Alpha has devoted itself mostly to historical performances of Baroque and Classical works, including in each album a reproduction, together with detail shots, of an artwork that may be directly or at least tangentially related to the music being performed. The format is equally suited to Romantic music and even music of the 20th century, into which Alpha ventures here. The label brings together various performers in the music of Lucien Durosoir, a composer and World War I veteran (he studied counterpoint in the trenches) whose music was largely forgotten but has been revived through the efforts of his son. It's well worth a fresh hearing, with a sort of post-Impressionist language that allows for a good deal of experiment. Durosoir, in fact, is at his best in pieces like the wholly original Le Balcon (track 1), composed in 1924. The work offers a sort of polyphonic reading of a
Baudelaire poem, with a setting of the text for a bass soloist accompanied by wordless choral sounds and strings. Durosoir's designation is "for bass solo, cordes vocales, et cordes instrumentales": bass solo, vocal cords, and instrumental cords. Poetry or other extramusical inspiration seems to lurk in the background of several of these works. The purely abstract Piano Trio in B minor is equally interesting, with its jagged surfaces and excursions into non-tonal harmonic zones; much of Durosoir's music was written for chamber ensembles, a canvas that allowed him to try out new structures on a small scale. The painting accompanying the recording (with essays in French and English) also represents a balcony: it is by Manet, and Quebec art historian Dénis Grenier points to an experimental spirit, an ability to think out blocks of a new language, as common to both artists. A very nice find for lovers of French music of the early 20th century.