Tailleferre The Flower of France – Piano Works Quynh Nguyen (piano) Music & Arts MACD1306 78:38 mins
The Flower of France is a suite of children’s pieces by Tailleferre, whose significance to 20th-century French music is gradually being acknowledged. She wrote appealing music throughout her life, rejecting – like many – the modernist tendencies which would dominate art music. But ‘appealing’ doesn’t mean ‘vapid’: many of these pieces are harmonically and texturally innovative.
Though the pieces are presented chronologically, they offer many possibilities for creative programming. The eponymous Fleurs de France, technically accessible miniatures, are an attractive enrichment to the repertoire, though perhaps not one after the other. We see Tailleferre’s widely shared interest in non-European cultures, eg the Pastorale inca and Chant chinois, as well as the European musical past in her Minuet in B flat. The Berceuse from 1936 is simply gorgeous.
There is much musical wit and elegance, from the lyric opening Impromptu to the hilarious – and surely unique – playfulness of Chiens and the love of the absurd, even surreal, in the ‘umbrella fugue’ (Fugue du Parapluie) from 1950. The 1952 suite L’aigle des rues is by turns sun-drenched, tender, humorous, learned and spiritual.
I would have welcomed more substantial liner notes to contextualise the music, but nevertheless learned much from this account, which includes selected transcriptions and excerpts from ballet and film scores. To my ear, the music demands a more colouristic, yielding and flexible approach, as well as a more generous, soft-edged recorded sound, but Nguyen has nevertheless produced a valuable document of Germaine Tailleferre’s piano works.
Natasha Loges
