Coming of age in the turbulent Paris of the 1920’s, Alexandre Tansman’s neo-classicism has remained largely overlooked, out-of-vogue among the company of the serialist avant-garde, but it’s finally beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Performed with real devotion by British pianist Margaret Fingerhut, a regular champion of underdog composers, these piano works, spanning Tansman’s career from the twenties to the eighties, reveal a composer closely in touch with the approachable neo-classical practices of the time.
A number of themes recur, particularly a fondness for mazurkas and jazz-tinged ‘blues’, and, unsurprisingly given Tansman’s background, the shadow of Debussy and Ravel’s hazy impressionism. ‘Recuil de Mazurkas a Albert Roussel’ takes Chopin’s lyricism in more surprising directions, while his ‘Troiseme Sonatine a Walter Spies en souvenir de Bali’ plays, subtly, with ringing gamelan timbres. The most recent works, the ‘Album d’amis’ miniatures of 1980 are the most rewarding, and varied, taking in the complexity of Ligeti in the ‘Etude’, his vision of American blues in ‘Tempo di Blues’ and the tonal simplicity of Zbigniew Preisner in the final Berceuse Polonaise. These are all pleasingly approachable but never uninteresting pieces, and this recording should go some way to intorducing Tansman to new listeners.
Joshua Meggitt
