Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Alexandre Tansman

Sonatine transatlantique

 

Early in the twentieth century, the quick spread of sound reproduction systems – on 78 r. p. m. discs and on cylinders – brought about an worldwide exchange of musical experiences. It was thanks to recordings, above all, that "cultivated" European composers were able to become acquainted with an exclusively American musical phenomenon: jazz. Especially after the First World War, many ensembles from the United States came to Europe, and local composers blended and "hybridised" their language with elements drawn from the new idiom. Jazz was born in the southern states, but it became, in a short time, a popular product of which the recording industry soon took possession. Among European musicians, for whom the tragedy of the First World War had destroyed the optimistic illusion of the "magnificent, progressive fate" of capitalistic society, jazz temporarily created the illusion of a sort of expressive purity, uncontaminated by civilisation’s disasters.

Alexandre Tansman, born in Lodz, Poland, in 1897, first caused a stir in 1919, at the age of twenty-two, when he won the first three prizes in the first Polish composition competition: he had entered three different works under three different pseudonyms. He went to the United States for the first time in 1927; his Second Concerto for piano and orchestra – dedicated to Charlie Chaplin – was performed there, and he was able to meet some of the best known jazz musicians, such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, in addition to developing a friendship with George Gershwin. The Sonatine transatlantique, composed in 1930 and dedicated to Irwing Schwerke, was one of the fruits of his American experience. It consists of three movements (Fox Trot, Allegro; Spiritual and Blues; Charleston, Molto vivo) in which the carefree nonchalance of the two fast movements is counterbalanced by the thoughtful pace of the middle one.

listen to Real Media recording

1. Fox Trot. Allegro
2. Spiritual and Blues
3. Charleston. Molto vivo

Performers

Performance