CD: Koechlin: Piano Works Vol 1

Though it has still only scratched the surface of Charles Koechlin's vast and still scarcely known output, Hänssler has temporarily, at least, abandoned its exploration of his orchestral works to begin a series devoted to the piano music. There are nine works included in this first instalment; none is very substantial. The longest movement is the early seven-minute Andante Quasi Adagio with which Michael Korstick begins his sequence, while most of the movements in the cycle Paysages et Marines completed in 1916, or in each of the four Sonatines Op 87, composed in the mid 1920s, lasts around two minutes. Slight they may be, but all are pieces of a very specific and refined sensibility; the almost childlike simplicity of some of the writing belies its technical difficulty. There's nothing pianistic about Koechlin's piano music, for all its echoes of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré. Korstick never even hints at those challenges; his performances have exactly the quiet authority and poetry this elusive music needs. He also supplies the fascinating and informative sleeve notes to this immaculately presented disc.