Robert Casadesus — Symphony No.1 in D Major, Op.19 (1935) [w/ score]

Описание: Composer: Robert Casadesus (1899–1972)

Orchestra: Northern Sinfonia
Conductor: Howard Shelley

To the outside world and in the context of his historical legacy, Robert Casadesus is remembered primarily as a preeminent pianist, a master of the 20th-century French school. However, Casadesus the composer is so obscure that if you search for him, you will almost exclusively find recordings of his piano performances; information and recordings of his own compositions are incredibly scarce.

Most critics dismiss his compositions as merely "pleasant and tuneful", yet he is a composer I fell in love with immediately upon my first listen. His sonority brings me an indescribable sense of modernity, always evoking images of modern Japanese cities like Tokyo in the fog or rain, as well as the music of Takashi Yoshimatsu. To some extent, Casadesus's music evokes modernist emotions and thoughts in me, even though the music itself certainly possesses no association with Japan.

Casadesus was the archetypal pianist-composer. On the surface, his music shares little ground with the mainstream post-impressionist trends prevalent in France during his time. In my view, the defining characteristic of his music is his diatonicism. This diatonicism often manifests as scale runs, yet, magically, his diatonic uses possess a strange enchantment.

To compare him with Maurice Duruflé (another composer I admire), whose language is rooted in modal harmony: while Duruflé is also highly diatonic and frequently uses the horizontal movement of contrapuntal voices as the framework for vertical harmony, his approach remains essentially Renaissance-esque in spirit. Duruflé's harmony is still chord-centric, distinguished mainly by being confined to modal scales, not gravitating toward a stable tonic note or chord. Casadesus's diatonicism, conversely, operates through runs in a true morphological sense. These runs largely dissolve the sensation of chords locally, resulting in the composite color of a specific scale, with the run itself serving as a crucial textural feature.

At the same time, however, many passages utilize clearly functional bass progressions in fourths and fifths. Furthermore, Casadesus often employs a trope of sudden "skewed" notes during a musical progression. The humor and irony inherent in the local chromaticism created by this technique lead many to compare him to Prokofiev. However, as I see it, the morphology of Casadesus's music has distinct temporal and spatial layering: diatonic when it needs to be, functional with fourth/fifth bass movement when required, and occasionally chromatic with "wrong" notes for scherzo-like effect. Therefore, compared to Duruflé and Prokofiev, Casadesus's music is in many ways more "polarized".

Contrary to my usual preferences, I find Casadesus's piano music more captivating than his orchestral works. To my mind, the metallic timbre of the piano is better suited to the palette of his musical language. I highly recommend his four piano sonatas and the 24 Preludes (Op.5), whose scores are all available on IMSLP.

While Casadesus's orchestration is technically solid, it is quite conventional and traditional. To some extent, this dilutes the paradoxical modernity and sharpness in his diatonic language. Regarding this particular symphony, a relatively early work, it is indeed "pleasant and healthy", just as the critics claim. My only critique lies in the arrangement of the movements: the fourth movement sounds like a lullaby, which dissipates the energy built up by the Appassionato of the third.

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00:00 - cover
00:03 - I. Par le lointain
06:30 - II
13:31 - III
19:11 - IV