Dusapin's Apex

[Mandryka]

Can anyone let me have the libretto to Romeo and Juliette?


There's this, but it's too hard to read

https://issuu.com/durand.salabert.eschig/docs/5099_dusapin_romeo_score_filigrane

[brewski]

Today, two performances of Dusapin's String Quartet No. 5 (2004-05) at the Banff Competition, by the Quartett HANA and Quatuor Elmire. It is a formidable 17 minutes or so, opening with a sweet violin solo over pizzicatos in the other instruments. The final pages have fluttering tremolos that gradually die away.

After this week is over I will check out other versions, including the inaugural recording from the Arditti Quartet. Mindful of the "15 favorite string quartets" thread, I could easily see this appearing on someone's list.

[CRCulver]

Dan Albertson over at La Folia has been harsh about Dusapin's recent music. There's a memorable quip "If you read a program note that prepares you for Xenakis and what you get is Saint-Saëns, Dusapin must be the culprit." I wish more Dusapin of the last twenty years were available in recording in order to judge the accuracy of this claim of stagnation.

[San Antone]

Dan Albertson over at La Folia has been harsh about Dusapin's recent music. There's a memorable quip "If you read a program note that prepares you for Xenakis and what you get is Saint-Saëns, Dusapin must be the culprit." I wish more Dusapin of the last twenty years were available in recording in order to judge the accuracy of this claim of stagnation.

Here's Waves an organ concerto from 2019.

IMO, this doesn't sound like Saint-Saëns.

[Mandryka]

Dan Albertson over at La Folia has been harsh about Dusapin's recent music. There's a memorable quip "If you read a program note that prepares you for Xenakis and what you get is Saint-Saëns, Dusapin must be the culprit." I wish more Dusapin of the last twenty years were available in recording in order to judge the accuracy of this claim of stagnation.

Well there's a recording of Aufgang, "The worst was Dusapin's appalling violin concerto Aufgang (Untergang would be more like it)."  It's rather nice - I bet you'll enjoy hearing it. I don't mean to condemn it with feint praise.

[San Antone]

Pascal Dusapin's Aufgang, a concerto for violin and orchestra ...
Myung-Whun Chung /Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; Renaud Capuçon

I don't hear anything about this work which would be described as "the worst" example of anything.

And if opinions about the composer matter, then I would sooner trust those of Renaud Capuçon and Myung-Whun Chung, who are staking their reputations by performing and recording the work over Dan Albertson's, who risks nothing with his snarky review, and gets attention for himself by trashing a world famous living composer.

[Mandryka]

I guess it's not surprising that Richard Toop prefers the earlier - concise, nervous, complicated and extroverted Dusapin - to the lyrical and expressive later music. Richard Toop, inventor of the phrase "New Complexity", Stockhausen expert. The extended exotic melodies of Aufgang isn't his sort of thing.

[Mandryka]

Ian Pace on Dusapin

https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/5421/8/Never_to_be_Naught_%28Dusapin%29.pdf

[André]

Dusapin is one of my favourite modern French composers. I have quite a few of his compositions and find them stimulating, intelligently conceived and totally listenable.

To me 'modern' only means it's of recent vintage and not written in an idiom that could have been current in Hindemith's or Rachmaninov's time. I care not a whit what style it's composed in. I recently listened to Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium and didn't find it modern-sounding at all. Pleasant but lost in time, definitely not modern. Everybody's definition of 'modern' differs.

[KevinP]

I'm not familiar with him, but I'm intrigued by this one:


Alas, Presto doesn't have the CD, only the downloads, and explicitly states no digital booklet is included which, for a copyrighted opera, is a dealbreaker. (And the {single} CD is USD90 on Amazon.)

Pity because I tend to like shorter opera with reduced cast--in this case a cast of one.

(And conducted by Herreweghe of all people.)

I'm intrigued enough to explore something else though.

[Mandryka]

I listened to his Requiem(s) - a disc by Accentus. Made me think of Nono's Quando stanno  morendo.