GÉRARD PESSON Aggravations et final

Gérard Pesson is a leading French composer of his generation, albeit one whose music bears the mark of a true Germanophile. This is perhaps best heard in the last two works on this disc: Wunderblock (Nebenstück II) “underwrites” the Maestoso from Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony in a manner reminiscent of Hans Zender’s transcriptions. For all the distortions and parasitical incursions from elsewhere, the substructure of the original is audible throughout.

This kind of homage is one aspect of Pesson’s output generally; another is best represented by the playful Cassation for string trio, piano and clarinet, whose evanescent centrepiece is the opening of Tristan as reworked by Wagner himself many years later. Most of the musical argument, however, is embodied in a language clearly derived form Lachenmann’s musique concrète instrumentale: here the musicians (as with the orchestra and chamber ensemble in Aggravations et final and Rescousse, respectively) engage in rhythmical scrapings, upward glissandi and breath-sounds, albeit in a rather different expressive intention from that of the German composer. That intention seems more overtly playful and allusive, and (dare I say it) more “French” in its focus on minute details; what is sometimes missing is the granite-like logic of Lachenmann’s long-term planning. Lest I appear to judge one composer according to the values of another, I should say that Pesson’s own notes are not always as helpful as one might wish. (In them one recognises the Frenchman, just as Lachenmann’s mark him out as German.) What is beyond doubt, and admirably, is the precision of these performances (by no means forgetting the pianist Hermann Kretzschmar in Vexierbilder II), which would do any composer proud. (Fabrice Fitch / Gramophone)