This was the first ECM release given over entirely to Henri Dutilleux, the French composer born in 1916, and it offers a broad survey of his music for one and two pianos. American pianist Robert Levin follows the path from the Piano Sonata of 1946-48, which Dutilleux regarded as his Op. 1, to the late Préludes, where extended tonality gives way to a sound world entirely his own. The album also became a memorial to the composer's wife, the pianist Geneviève Joy, who was his first interpreter at the keyboard and died shortly before the disc was completed.
Levin met Dutilleux in 1979, during his season as director in residence at Nadia Boulanger's Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, and the two remained close friends. ECM listeners know him as a long-standing duo partner of violist Kim Kashkashian, and he has taught for many years at Harvard. For the four Figures de résonances for two pianos he is joined by Ya-Fei Chuang. The sessions took place in December 2008 at the Auditorio of Radio Svizzera in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due, with Manfred Eicher producing and Markus Heiland as engineer. Levin wrote the booklet essay himself, observing that Dutilleux subjected his works to "relentless revision" before and sometimes after their premieres.
The Sonata moves from an Allegro con moto through a Lied to a closing Choral et variations, the longest track on the disc. ECM hears in it a personal blend of French Impressionism and the clear rhythmic outlines of Soviet music from the same years. The three Préludes span fifteen years. D'ombre et de silence (1973) was written for Artur Rubinstein and Sur un même accord (1977) is dedicated to Claude Helffer, while Le jeu des contraires (1988) was composed for a piano competition. Between them sit miniatures such as Blackbird (1950) and Résonances (1965), and the programme ends with the six pieces of Au gré des ondes (1946), written as interludes for French radio.
The disc was an Instrumental Choice in BBC Music Magazine, a Choc du mois in Classica and a Recording of the Month for MusicWeb International in October 2010. Writing in Gramophone, Arnold Whittall praised "the unbridled energy and clarity with which it puts the music's distinctive argumentative character across". Roger Nichols, in BBC Music Magazine, singled out the closing suite and called its Hommage à Bach "the most convincing pastiche of JSB I've heard".
This is the CD edition of ECM New Series 2105, first released in April 2010, with Levin's liner notes in English, German and French.
