This week’s new release comes to us from MSR Classics and features piano music by a composer I didn’t have a lot of familiarity with — Gabriel Dupont. The pieces are all from around the turn of the last century and it’s lovely – his style is unique – somewhere between romanticism and impressionism. I’m surprised it’s not better known. He died early of TB (36) which contributed to his obscurity, but during his lifetime he was quite popular. Dupont was born in Normandy in 1878, then studied with Massenet at the Paris Conservatory, but the TB started keeping him down early on in his music career. He’d make a partial recovery and keep writing, but he eventually succumbed just as France entered WWI.
The recording is a double CD containing two major piano suites, Les Heures Dolentes (The Sorrowful Hours, prefaced by symbolist poetry) and La Maison dans les Dunes (The House in the Dunes.) There are also a couple of shorter early works.
The pianist on the release is Bo Ties (pronounced teece.) He grew up not too far from Wisconsin, in southeastern Minnesota, and studied Piano Performance at Winona State University as an undergrad, and completed a Master’s and DMA at the University of Iowa.
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