CD Review: Germaine Tailleferre Piano works revived vol.1 (Nicolas Horvath, piano) Grand Piano 891

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) is a composer ripe for rescuing from obscurity. With this first release in a new survey of her complete piano works the Monaco-born pianist Nicolas Horvath proves he is the man for the job.

Tailleferre, it would seem, possessed a rebellious streak. Against her father’s wishes, she insisted on a career in music. To that end, she rubbed shoulders in the 1920s with Milhaud and Poulenc as the only female member of the Montmartre-based collective Les Six. It is known that she wrote at the piano, hence, keyboard music is central to her output. Tailleferre’s compositional style, however, was far from fixed: it shifts from the neoclassical and tonal to bitonality, rhythmically disciplined to irregular and wilfully dissonant. Each of these aspects is heard across the fifty-five tracks of this packed release. Several works - many in their first recordings - are presented as groupings: Fleurs de France (written in 1930), Suite dans le style Louis XV and transcriptions of works by Scarlatti, Lully, Monteverdi, etc.

Horvath delights in it all, relishing the different aspects of this music. Unsurprisingly for a pianist with a penchant for a wide repertoire - his recordings of Erik Satie's music on the Grand Piano label are noteworthy - he plays it with both awareness and a sense of wonder. The release benefits from helpfully insightful liner notes and first class recorded sound. Further volumes in this series are keenly awaited. Might those volumes even extend to her concertos? There's one for a single piano and another, dating from 1934, for two pianos, chorus, four saxophones and orchestra. When, one wonders, would an orchestra be brave enough to programme such a work today?