Notes and Editorial Reviews
ALPAERTS
Capriccio—Merriment. Pallieter. Romanza.
1
Summer Idyll. James Ensor Suite
•
Michel Tabachnik, cond; Guido de Neve (vn);
1
Flemish RO
•
ET’CETERA 4025 (63:52)
This release documents the work of Flemish composer Flor Alpaerts (1876–1954). He was born into a life of privation, but studied at the Flemish School of Music in Antwerp and became a noteworthy violinist and conductor,
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ultimately rising to the position of director of the Antwerp Conservatory. It was his conducting skills, however, that thrust him onto the international scene, where he became an advocate for the Belgian composers of his time. By current standards, his language is post-Romantic and quite user-friendly. Richard Strauss resonates in these pieces, as do Wagner, Debussy, and Ravel in a quite deft synthesis.
Pallieter
of 1924 is based on a 1916 novel of the same title by Felix Timmermans, and it serves to document the initial phase of Alpaerts’s career as a composer. The result is an almost Delius-like essay that projects moments of joy leavened by an all-encompassing melancholy.
The finest piece on this offering is the
James Ensor Suite
of 1928, in which Alpaerts produces moments of dark irony. It was inspired by a painting of James Ensor’s titled
Christ’s Entry into Brussels.
Here his language becomes more brittle and acerbic than that of his
Pallieter
of four years earlier, and his orchestration is noticeably spikier, though far less so than one finds in the contemporary scores of Bartók and Stravinsky.
In sum, Alpaerts is a second-tier composer, but, to invoke Richard Strauss’s self-deprecating evaluation of himself, Alpaerts is in the first class of second-class composers who undeniably composed some quite attractive music, documented with distinction on this release.
FANFARE: William Zagorski
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Works on This Recording
1.
Pallieter by Flor Alpaerts
Conductor:
Michel Tabachnik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Flemish Radio Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1924
2.
Summer Idyll by Flor Alpaerts
Conductor:
Michel Tabachnik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Flemish Radio Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1928
Length: 7 Minutes 39 Secs.
3.
Capriccio "Merriment" by Flor Alpaerts
Conductor:
Michel Tabachnik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Flemish Radio Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1953
Length: 4 Minutes 55 Secs.
4.
Romanza for Violin and Orchestra by Flor Alpaerts
Performer:
Guido De Neve (Violin)
Conductor:
Michel Tabachnik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Flemish Radio Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1928
5.
James Ensor Suite by Flor Alpaerts
Conductor:
Michel Tabachnik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Flemish Radio Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1928; Belgium
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