wimpel69
02-10-2013, 07:14 PM
The sharing period on these albums has ended. No re-up of my rip, please.
And no further requests.
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) is called both a French composer of Polish birth and
a Polish composer who emigrated to France. However, he likely considered France his adopted
homeland; except for the war years he lived in Paris from 1919 until his death in 1986, and he
chose the French spelling of his given name, Aleksander. Tansman was born in Lodz, Poland, to
Jewish parents. His mother was a good amateur pianist who gave him his first piano lessons.
At the age of 11, he enrolled at the Lodz Conservatory, where he studied composition and
conducting in addition to piano. Among his teachers there was Wojciech Gawronski. In 1914,
Tansman began studies at the Warsaw University, where he graduated with a degree in law in
1918. It is said that the exceptionally intelligent, well-rounded Tansman had learned to speak
seven languages. He entered several works under two different names in the 1919 Polish
National Music Competition and won three prizes.
Still, he felt his music was not sufficiently appreciated because of its modernisms and he departed
for Paris in late 1919. In the French capital, he met the leading composers of the day, including
Stravinsky and Ravel, whose music influenced his, particularly the neo-Classicism of the former.
Tansman also developed a camaraderie with other European �migr�s in Paris, including Tcherepnin
and Martin�, and with Andr�s Segovia, who inspired him to write several pieces for guitar.
Tansman's successful concert debut in Paris in February 1920 opened inroads for his career as a
pianist. He also composed many important works during his first decades in Paris, including the
Symphony No. 2 (1926) and the first two piano concertos, 1925 and 1927, respectively. As early
as 1921, Vladimir Golschmann introduced his orchestral work Impressions to Parisian audiences
and with Koussevitzky, Tansman performed his piano concertos in Paris and Boston. In 1932,
Tansman launched a world tour, performing in Japan, China, Singapore, Bali, Egypt, Greece,
and other exotic locations. His career as pianist and composer remained quite successful throughout
the 1930s and in 1938, he was given French citizenship. But trouble was on the horizon with the
growing menace of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Shortly after the occupation of France in 1941, Tansman
fled with his French wife, pianist Collete Cras, and two daughters. Helped by a fund established by
Charlie Chaplin, they settled in Los Angeles that same year, where Tansman met other Jewish exiles,
including Arnold Schoenberg and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Tansman returned to Paris in 1946, but
soon found his career would never be the same. He remained true to his largely neo-Classical style,
which was quickly going out of fashion in favor of serial music and other avant-garde styles. Moreover,
the music establishment in Poland, which had come under communist control, was loathe to play the
works of a Jewish exile living in the West. While he continued to write much music, including operas,
such as Georges Dandin (1973-1974) and ballets, such as R�surrection (1961-1962), as well as
orchestral and instrumental works, his reputation gradually faded.
Like other notable European ex-pats in Hollywood, e.g. Castelnuovo-Tedesco or Ernst Toch, Tansman
found himself working for the movies, mostly anonymously - (ghost) writing cues for often
lesser Tinseltown in -house studio composers without a credit. The present collection features
the 4-CD Chandos series of his Symphonies, plus three other CDs with miscellaneous orchestral
works like the Violin- and Cello Concertos, the ballet The Ten Commandments, and the Concerto
for Orchestra. The bonus discs are from DUX, Koch Schwann and Marco Polo,respectively.
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the originals! :)
Music Composed by Alexandre Tansman
Played by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra & Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Conducted by Oleg Caetani
bonus discs featuring, a.o.
Bartosz Kajler (violin) & Sebastian Hess (cello)
Played by the Podlasie Opera Orchestra, NDR Radio Philharmonic
And the Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Israel Yinon, Antonio de Almeida & Marcin Nalecz-Niesiolowski
"The joint Caetani-Chandos-Tansman symphonic cycle has pretty much sidled into the catalogue and has
received little acclaim. This imaginative music merits better treatment.
Tansman was born in Lodz in Poland but moved to Paris when he was twenty. His works were
taken up by Vladimir Golschmann and Serge Koussevitsky. The latter commissioned a brace of
piano concertos from him (1925, 1927) which the composer followed up with a concert tour of
the USA in 1927-8. Like Koechlin and Aubert the international celebrity of Charlie Chaplin (Charlot)
drew a work from Tansman. In fact the second piano concerto is dedicated to Chaplin. The
invasion of France propelled Tansman to the USA where, like many another �migr�, he earned
a living in the bear-pit of the Hollywood film world.
Tansman is no stranger to CD but until this resplendent series his presence in the catalogue has
been precarious. There has been quite a bit of activity from Etcetera on the chamber music front,
two CDs from Marco Polo including the Fifth Symphony, the Violin Concerto on Olympia and the
Fourth Symphony on both Koch Schwann and Dux.
Chandos do not do things by halves. We start with Volume 2 simply because I have not heard
the first CD in this series which includes Symphonies 4, 5 and 6 ‘In memoriam'. These are played
by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with the Melbourne Chorale conducted by Oleg Caetani.
It’s on Chandos CHSA5041 (SACD) entitled The War Years.
Turning to Volume 3 first: The 1926 Second Symphony is in four movements for full orchestra.
This is a work of sprung athletic ideas. A little heartless, � la Markevitch, in the outer movements,
it is in fact touching in a Gallic sense in the Lento. The Scherzo is a skittery, fey, shining and
twinkling web. The Symphony is dedicated to Koussevitsky who premiered it in Paris on 28 May
1927. I should add that the First Symphony is lost.
In the Quatre Mouvements of 1967-68 there are reminiscences of Markevitch and perhaps a touch of
Eugene Goossens in his final 1950s phase. The first movement is marked by a fluttering ostinato
followed in the second by a feathery avian concatenation. The third movement is memorable for its
spare textures and bells rung and hammered. There is humanity aplenty in the finale with a ruthless
stuttered ostinato, full of intrigue and engagement. At the end there is a falling away into a
diaphanous Ravelian decay of bells and a silvery gleam.
The Third Symphony Symphonie Concertante (1931) is for violin, viola, cello, piano and orchestra.
It was premiered in Brussels on 6 March 1932. The movements reflect a style familiar from Grainger
and Ravel, from Jazz Age Stravinsky, from the squeaky-beguiling-sinister originality of Ravel’s Mother
Goose and finally from the flashing and flittering neo-classical syncopation of Dumbarton Oaks.
Turning to volume 2: The Seventh Symphony Lyrique was written in Los Angeles and is dedicated to
Vera and Igor Stravinsky. It was premiered in St Louis by Golschmann. It is a work of some urgency of
expression with at first a touch of 1940s Martinu of an athletic clean-limbed nature. There’s a cool
and pavane-like magical atmosphere in the second movement and in the third a jerky streaming life
complete with the evocation of car-horns. Things are aptly rounded by a contemplative finale.
The Eight Symphony is entitled Musique pour Orchestre. It was completed in the year he published
his monograph on Stravinsky: 1948. Premiered by Kubelik with the Italian Radio Symphony Orchestra,
its lines are silvery and cleanly defined. There’s a slowly mellifluous and contemplative Elegie dedicated
to Franz Andr�, the fine Belgian conductor whose name will be known to those who sought out Belgian
music LPs. The third movement is a busy, minimalistically-scored little scherzo. Its skittery career
suggests Shostakovich. The many streaming fugal lines manage to be more romantic than academic.
The finale begins subdued but then plays extravagantly with a fugal weave of great arching and leaping
lines. It ends with a typical Stravinskian fast-trudge and a booted Petrushka stomp.
A decade later came his Ninth Symphony, a work written for himself and not as a commission. It kicked
a trend evident in his last decades when he became known for works without the word ‘symphony’ in the
title. The first is all leaping activity. The second is a heartfelt threnody. The third again draws on his
mastery of evoking shimmering, tinkling, shining and gleaming textures dashed against carefree and
fluttering woodwind writing. The finale opens with a pensive introduction which paves the way for a double
fugue of ambitious proportions and boisterous temperament. This again and sounds like Markevitch at
times. It is excitingly carefree at the end in a burst of pages that throwing off any sign of the academic’s
skeletal hand.
All three of these works are between 21 and 22 minutes long. The style is not loquacious or high-flown
but economical and to the point. However do not expect major florid emotional statements.
Volume 4 is the last in the series and has only recently (2009) been issued.
The sound quality is deeply impressive with the jazzy surging ferment of the Sinfonie de chambre
caught in every detail, even in the complexity of the initial Toccata and in the final movement. For a
work dating from 1960 it’s surprisingly reminiscent of Constant Lambert’s ballets. Less Stravinskian
than I had expected, Caetani and his lustrous and expert Swiss orchestra make these pages zing and
exult as they should. They do this without scouting over the passionate depth of the central Elegie -
its doughty string paeans are fully put across. The singing scalpel and swinging hammer of the strings
reminded me a little of Martinu. Other moments suggest a cross with Kurt Weill. Despite its diminutive
proportions the work and its emotional cortex feel epic and deeply serious.
The Sinfonietta No.1 is scored for orchestra with single woodwinds, brass, and piano and is dedicated
to the composer Louis Gruenberg (1884-1964). There is a touch of jazzy Lambert here amid the pellucid
orchestration but also of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and of Ravel’s Mother Goose. The latter can be heard
in the creepiness of the Notturno and the seraphic peace of the Mazurka. It’s a work bristling with
delightful ideas and aural coups de th��tre.
Sinfonietta No.2 comes from the other end of his life. It was commissioned by Polish Radio and dates
from 1978. It was premiered as part of Tansman’s 80th birthday celebrations in Poland. In four movements
like its predecessor, it infers a more philosophical man behind the notes with rhetoric balanced by
reflection. The piano remains a strong accentuating part of the aural picture. The music still glints and
flutters and in no sense suggests a tired imagination as the second movement makes clear with its occasional
Firebird flutters. A fleeting Adagio makes a chilly spell before making way for a jazzily athletic, even belligerent,
Finale romantico with singing strings and beautifully created gleaming textures.
The Sinfonia Piccola was commissioned by the French Ministry of Education and dedicated to a famous
surgeon, Dr Jean-Louis Lortat-Jacob. Its four movements encompass Ravelian reflective melancholy, spliced
with Stravinskian neo-classicism, Lambertian effervescence, Gershwin street-scenes and exultation. Its
weakness is its rather perfunctory ending. By a short margin it is, despite its title, the longest of the
pieces on volume 4.
If you remain to be convinced and do not want to splash out on all four discs in one go then go for volume 4.
If that does not enthuse you then Tansman may not be the composer for you. I was ready not to be impressed
but came away wanting to hear his other works including the reputedly grand oratorio Isaie le Proph�te preferably
coupled, as suggested by Musica et Memoria, with the Psaumes for tenor, chorus and orchestra. It would also
be good to hear his opera Sabbatai Zevi (1957-58)
Tansman’s music: superficially neo-classical on the surface but superbly rich in rising emotional sap. More Lambert
and ripe Martinu than desiccated Stravisnky or Hindemith."
Musicweb International
The sharing period on these albums has ended. No re-up of my rip, please.
And no further requests.
And no further requests.
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) is called both a French composer of Polish birth and
a Polish composer who emigrated to France. However, he likely considered France his adopted
homeland; except for the war years he lived in Paris from 1919 until his death in 1986, and he
chose the French spelling of his given name, Aleksander. Tansman was born in Lodz, Poland, to
Jewish parents. His mother was a good amateur pianist who gave him his first piano lessons.
At the age of 11, he enrolled at the Lodz Conservatory, where he studied composition and
conducting in addition to piano. Among his teachers there was Wojciech Gawronski. In 1914,
Tansman began studies at the Warsaw University, where he graduated with a degree in law in
1918. It is said that the exceptionally intelligent, well-rounded Tansman had learned to speak
seven languages. He entered several works under two different names in the 1919 Polish
National Music Competition and won three prizes.
Still, he felt his music was not sufficiently appreciated because of its modernisms and he departed
for Paris in late 1919. In the French capital, he met the leading composers of the day, including
Stravinsky and Ravel, whose music influenced his, particularly the neo-Classicism of the former.
Tansman also developed a camaraderie with other European �migr�s in Paris, including Tcherepnin
and Martin�, and with Andr�s Segovia, who inspired him to write several pieces for guitar.
Tansman's successful concert debut in Paris in February 1920 opened inroads for his career as a
pianist. He also composed many important works during his first decades in Paris, including the
Symphony No. 2 (1926) and the first two piano concertos, 1925 and 1927, respectively. As early
as 1921, Vladimir Golschmann introduced his orchestral work Impressions to Parisian audiences
and with Koussevitzky, Tansman performed his piano concertos in Paris and Boston. In 1932,
Tansman launched a world tour, performing in Japan, China, Singapore, Bali, Egypt, Greece,
and other exotic locations. His career as pianist and composer remained quite successful throughout
the 1930s and in 1938, he was given French citizenship. But trouble was on the horizon with the
growing menace of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Shortly after the occupation of France in 1941, Tansman
fled with his French wife, pianist Collete Cras, and two daughters. Helped by a fund established by
Charlie Chaplin, they settled in Los Angeles that same year, where Tansman met other Jewish exiles,
including Arnold Schoenberg and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Tansman returned to Paris in 1946, but
soon found his career would never be the same. He remained true to his largely neo-Classical style,
which was quickly going out of fashion in favor of serial music and other avant-garde styles. Moreover,
the music establishment in Poland, which had come under communist control, was loathe to play the
works of a Jewish exile living in the West. While he continued to write much music, including operas,
such as Georges Dandin (1973-1974) and ballets, such as R�surrection (1961-1962), as well as
orchestral and instrumental works, his reputation gradually faded.
Like other notable European ex-pats in Hollywood, e.g. Castelnuovo-Tedesco or Ernst Toch, Tansman
found himself working for the movies, mostly anonymously - (ghost) writing cues for often
lesser Tinseltown in -house studio composers without a credit. The present collection features
the 4-CD Chandos series of his Symphonies, plus three other CDs with miscellaneous orchestral
works like the Violin- and Cello Concertos, the ballet The Ten Commandments, and the Concerto
for Orchestra. The bonus discs are from DUX, Koch Schwann and Marco Polo,respectively.
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the originals! :)
Music Composed by Alexandre Tansman
Played by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra & Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Conducted by Oleg Caetani
bonus discs featuring, a.o.
Bartosz Kajler (violin) & Sebastian Hess (cello)
Played by the Podlasie Opera Orchestra, NDR Radio Philharmonic
And the Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Israel Yinon, Antonio de Almeida & Marcin Nalecz-Niesiolowski
"The joint Caetani-Chandos-Tansman symphonic cycle has pretty much sidled into the catalogue and has
received little acclaim. This imaginative music merits better treatment.
Tansman was born in Lodz in Poland but moved to Paris when he was twenty. His works were
taken up by Vladimir Golschmann and Serge Koussevitsky. The latter commissioned a brace of
piano concertos from him (1925, 1927) which the composer followed up with a concert tour of
the USA in 1927-8. Like Koechlin and Aubert the international celebrity of Charlie Chaplin (Charlot)
drew a work from Tansman. In fact the second piano concerto is dedicated to Chaplin. The
invasion of France propelled Tansman to the USA where, like many another �migr�, he earned
a living in the bear-pit of the Hollywood film world.
Tansman is no stranger to CD but until this resplendent series his presence in the catalogue has
been precarious. There has been quite a bit of activity from Etcetera on the chamber music front,
two CDs from Marco Polo including the Fifth Symphony, the Violin Concerto on Olympia and the
Fourth Symphony on both Koch Schwann and Dux.
Chandos do not do things by halves. We start with Volume 2 simply because I have not heard
the first CD in this series which includes Symphonies 4, 5 and 6 ‘In memoriam'. These are played
by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with the Melbourne Chorale conducted by Oleg Caetani.
It’s on Chandos CHSA5041 (SACD) entitled The War Years.
Turning to Volume 3 first: The 1926 Second Symphony is in four movements for full orchestra.
This is a work of sprung athletic ideas. A little heartless, � la Markevitch, in the outer movements,
it is in fact touching in a Gallic sense in the Lento. The Scherzo is a skittery, fey, shining and
twinkling web. The Symphony is dedicated to Koussevitsky who premiered it in Paris on 28 May
1927. I should add that the First Symphony is lost.
In the Quatre Mouvements of 1967-68 there are reminiscences of Markevitch and perhaps a touch of
Eugene Goossens in his final 1950s phase. The first movement is marked by a fluttering ostinato
followed in the second by a feathery avian concatenation. The third movement is memorable for its
spare textures and bells rung and hammered. There is humanity aplenty in the finale with a ruthless
stuttered ostinato, full of intrigue and engagement. At the end there is a falling away into a
diaphanous Ravelian decay of bells and a silvery gleam.
The Third Symphony Symphonie Concertante (1931) is for violin, viola, cello, piano and orchestra.
It was premiered in Brussels on 6 March 1932. The movements reflect a style familiar from Grainger
and Ravel, from Jazz Age Stravinsky, from the squeaky-beguiling-sinister originality of Ravel’s Mother
Goose and finally from the flashing and flittering neo-classical syncopation of Dumbarton Oaks.
Turning to volume 2: The Seventh Symphony Lyrique was written in Los Angeles and is dedicated to
Vera and Igor Stravinsky. It was premiered in St Louis by Golschmann. It is a work of some urgency of
expression with at first a touch of 1940s Martinu of an athletic clean-limbed nature. There’s a cool
and pavane-like magical atmosphere in the second movement and in the third a jerky streaming life
complete with the evocation of car-horns. Things are aptly rounded by a contemplative finale.
The Eight Symphony is entitled Musique pour Orchestre. It was completed in the year he published
his monograph on Stravinsky: 1948. Premiered by Kubelik with the Italian Radio Symphony Orchestra,
its lines are silvery and cleanly defined. There’s a slowly mellifluous and contemplative Elegie dedicated
to Franz Andr�, the fine Belgian conductor whose name will be known to those who sought out Belgian
music LPs. The third movement is a busy, minimalistically-scored little scherzo. Its skittery career
suggests Shostakovich. The many streaming fugal lines manage to be more romantic than academic.
The finale begins subdued but then plays extravagantly with a fugal weave of great arching and leaping
lines. It ends with a typical Stravinskian fast-trudge and a booted Petrushka stomp.
A decade later came his Ninth Symphony, a work written for himself and not as a commission. It kicked
a trend evident in his last decades when he became known for works without the word ‘symphony’ in the
title. The first is all leaping activity. The second is a heartfelt threnody. The third again draws on his
mastery of evoking shimmering, tinkling, shining and gleaming textures dashed against carefree and
fluttering woodwind writing. The finale opens with a pensive introduction which paves the way for a double
fugue of ambitious proportions and boisterous temperament. This again and sounds like Markevitch at
times. It is excitingly carefree at the end in a burst of pages that throwing off any sign of the academic’s
skeletal hand.
All three of these works are between 21 and 22 minutes long. The style is not loquacious or high-flown
but economical and to the point. However do not expect major florid emotional statements.
Volume 4 is the last in the series and has only recently (2009) been issued.
The sound quality is deeply impressive with the jazzy surging ferment of the Sinfonie de chambre
caught in every detail, even in the complexity of the initial Toccata and in the final movement. For a
work dating from 1960 it’s surprisingly reminiscent of Constant Lambert’s ballets. Less Stravinskian
than I had expected, Caetani and his lustrous and expert Swiss orchestra make these pages zing and
exult as they should. They do this without scouting over the passionate depth of the central Elegie -
its doughty string paeans are fully put across. The singing scalpel and swinging hammer of the strings
reminded me a little of Martinu. Other moments suggest a cross with Kurt Weill. Despite its diminutive
proportions the work and its emotional cortex feel epic and deeply serious.
The Sinfonietta No.1 is scored for orchestra with single woodwinds, brass, and piano and is dedicated
to the composer Louis Gruenberg (1884-1964). There is a touch of jazzy Lambert here amid the pellucid
orchestration but also of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and of Ravel’s Mother Goose. The latter can be heard
in the creepiness of the Notturno and the seraphic peace of the Mazurka. It’s a work bristling with
delightful ideas and aural coups de th��tre.
Sinfonietta No.2 comes from the other end of his life. It was commissioned by Polish Radio and dates
from 1978. It was premiered as part of Tansman’s 80th birthday celebrations in Poland. In four movements
like its predecessor, it infers a more philosophical man behind the notes with rhetoric balanced by
reflection. The piano remains a strong accentuating part of the aural picture. The music still glints and
flutters and in no sense suggests a tired imagination as the second movement makes clear with its occasional
Firebird flutters. A fleeting Adagio makes a chilly spell before making way for a jazzily athletic, even belligerent,
Finale romantico with singing strings and beautifully created gleaming textures.
The Sinfonia Piccola was commissioned by the French Ministry of Education and dedicated to a famous
surgeon, Dr Jean-Louis Lortat-Jacob. Its four movements encompass Ravelian reflective melancholy, spliced
with Stravinskian neo-classicism, Lambertian effervescence, Gershwin street-scenes and exultation. Its
weakness is its rather perfunctory ending. By a short margin it is, despite its title, the longest of the
pieces on volume 4.
If you remain to be convinced and do not want to splash out on all four discs in one go then go for volume 4.
If that does not enthuse you then Tansman may not be the composer for you. I was ready not to be impressed
but came away wanting to hear his other works including the reputedly grand oratorio Isaie le Proph�te preferably
coupled, as suggested by Musica et Memoria, with the Psaumes for tenor, chorus and orchestra. It would also
be good to hear his opera Sabbatai Zevi (1957-58)
Tansman’s music: superficially neo-classical on the surface but superbly rich in rising emotional sap. More Lambert
and ripe Martinu than desiccated Stravisnky or Hindemith."
Musicweb International
The sharing period on these albums has ended. No re-up of my rip, please.
And no further requests.
