Marie-Catherine Girod & Quatuor Prazak - Gabriel Dupont (2014) [Official Digital Download]

Now unjustly forgotten, Gabriel Dupont left us two large-scale cycles of piano pieces and a sumptuous Quintet for strings and piano. This composer who died aged 36 in 1914 was the last representative of French Romanticism. His inspired, lyrical music sings of nature, the sea, the wind and the rain. Marie Catherine Girod is one of the leading specialists of a figure who is overdue for rediscovery.

For more than twenty years now, Marie Catherine Girod has been a passionate defender of neglected and forgotten repertoire for the piano. It is to her that we owe the world premiere recording of La Maison dans les dunes in 1997. This new disc, recorded in Prague, the city of the celebrated Pražák Quartet, on a Petrov piano whose velvety sonorities are ideally suited to the composer’s melancholy, ‘Proustian’ universe, demonstrates once again that Gabriel Dupont is a composer who is overdue for rediscovery.

This album presents the first world recording of “Journée de Printemps”, poem for violin and piano.

Tracklist:

Gabriel Dupont (1878-1914)

01. Poème pour piano et quatuor à cordes: I. Sombre et douloureux
02. Poème pour piano et quatuor à cordes: II. Clair et calme
03. Poème pour piano et quatuor à cordes: III. Joyeux et ensoleillé
04. Les Heures dolentes: I. Epigraphe
05. La maison dans les dunes: III. La maison du souvenir
06. Les Heures dolentes: III. Du soleil au jardin
07. Les Heures dolentes: V. Après-midi de dimanche
08. Les Heures dolentes: VII. Une amie est venue avec des fleurs
09. La maison dans les dunes: V. Mélancolie du bonheur
10. Les Heures dolentes: X. Coquetteries
11. Les Heures dolentes: XII. Des enfants jouent dans le jardin
12. Les Heures dolentes: XIV. Calme
13. Journée de printemps, pour violon & piano: I. Au matin
14. Journée de printemps, pour violon & piano: II. Au soir

Personnel:
Marie-Catherine Girod, piano

The Pražák Quartet:
Pavel Hůla, 1st violin
Vlastimil Holek, 2nd violin
Josef Klusoň, viola
Michal Kaňka, cello