• Darkness and devilry lurk in the shadows of the latest recording by the UK-based French pianist Emmanuel Despax: Après un Rêve: Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano (Signum Classics). Embracing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Cécile Chaminade’s Nocturne and Henri Duparc’s Aux étoiles, the mood is sensuous, the choice irresistible, but menace lies in wait. This beguiling tour of nocturnal French music dates from the turn of last century, spanning Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre (1875) to Francis Poulenc’s Les Soirées de Nazelles (1930-36), a substantial, unsettling work in 11 sections. Despax has recorded Bach, Brahms, Chopin, but the works here particularly suit his sensibility. In Maurice Ravel’s haunting masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit, he masters the ferocious challenges with ease, delicacy, strength. As a tribute to his grandfather, the poet Jacques Charpentreau, Despax has selected texts for reading alongside the music.
• Interest in the American composer Florence Price (1887-1953) has exploded in less than a decade, with a flood of piano works, songs and orchestral works now back in the repertoire. Her life story, which includes moving from the rural south to urban Chicago as part of the African American “great migration”, demonstrates determination against the odds. Chineke! Orchestra’s Florence Price (Decca), conducted by Roderick Cox, includes her best known work, Symphony No 1 in E minor, with the Piano Concerto in One Movement, featuring soloist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, who gave the work its BBC Proms premiere with Chineke! in 2021. Her playing is vigorous and authoritative. Price could have no more persuasive an advocate. From the tone poem Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, His Resignation and Faith completes the disc. Chineke! Orchestra’s woodwind, especially, shine in these lively performances. A booklet note by pianist-scholar Samantha Ege provides excellent background.
• Price is also among the composers featured in Radio 3’s broadcast of last week’s 50th birthday gala concert for the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, alongside works by Grieg, Bernstein, Respighi and more. Hear it on BBC Sounds.
