A new studio recording of the last major work by an unsung contemporary of Debussy.
Born in 1878, Gabriel Èduard Xavier Dupont entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 15, studied with Massenet and Widor, and scored an early success with an opera performed at La Scala, before he died of tuberculosis at just 36. Dupont’s output is small but significant. He knew Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt and Romain Rolland, among many other leading figures of literary and artistic Paris of the early 20th century.
During his convalescence in 1903, Dupont composed his first piano masterpiece, Les heures dolentes. Five years later, as a resident at Cap Ferret, in a remote refuge for tuberculosis patients, he wrote La maison dans les dunes (1908–1909), which Maurice Dumesnil premiered on 3 June 1910 at the Salle Pleyel
The zenith of his piano music is reached in his last piano cycle, La maison dans les dunes, composed in 1908-9. The light of health and hope infuses the cycle, rather than the shadow of mortality hanging over the earlier Les heures dolentes. The music is dramatic, playful, agitated, and touching, and Dupont uses richly chromatic harmony to paint impressionistic and symbolic depictions of sailboats, the changing weather, the sky, the breeze blowing through the trees, and the sunlight.
When balmy summer days are spent stargazing by the water beneath clear, blue skies, La maison dans les dunes is the ideal soundtrack. It is ‘a song of the sea,’ wrote Dumesnil, ‘uttered by a patient who once again smiles upon life as he wanders through the dunes on a bright morning, watching the white sails, sunbeams playing on the waves, splashes of blinding light.’
This new recording is the sequel to Giuseppe Taccogna’s Piano Classics album of Les heures dolentes. The Italian pianist has made a special study of Dupont’s music, and contributes an illuminating booklet essay on the composer’s life and work. It will engage any listener familiar with Debussy and Ravel, who wishes to explore the work of a little-known contemporary whose promise may have remained unfulfilled, but who contributed much to turn-of-the-century French music.
Gabriel Dupont (1878 -1914) died prematurely from tuberculosis, and perhaps one reason why he never attained the fame of his contemporaries like Ravel, Debussy and Faurè was his short life, signed by his illness and the large time spent in recovering in convalescent homes, alienated from the intellectual and artistic inspiration of the capital. On the other hand, this forced isolation allowed the composer to seek his own style and musical personality.
Despite his unfortune life, in just over a decade he managed to realize some highly original works. In his two piano suites Gabriel Dupont proves to be a representative of the Belle Époque: his music, hard to define, lies between romanticism and impressionism with strong connections to symbolism.
Dupont’s last piano cycle, La maison dans les dunes, was composed in 1908-9. At this point in his life, Dupont was spending the winters at Arcachon and the summers in Le Vésinet. He quotes a line by Friedrich Nietzsche at the head of the score: ‘Alone with the clear sky and the open sea.’ The cycle invokes images of a house in the dunes where a person lives alone, accompanied by the rhythms of the sea, the morning light, the pines rustling in the evening breeze, the lapping waves at night, sails on the water, and the ceaseless play of light on water. Solitude need not be associated exclusively with melancholy, and in fact Dupont felt a new vitality during the period of the cycle’s composition. The light of health and hope accordingly infuses La maison dans les dunes, which is not marked by the shadow of mortality hanging over the earlier Les heures dolentes. The music is dramatic, playful, agitated, and touching, and Dupont uses richly chromatic harmony to paint impressionistic and symbolic depictions of sailboats, the changing weather, the sky, the breeze blowing through the trees, and the sunlight.
Played with great feeling for atmosphere by Italian pianist Giuseppe Taccogna, who earlier successfully recorded “Les heures dolentes” for Piano Classics.
