Charles Koechlin – L’Abbaye – French Radio – 1952 – Past Daily Weekend Gramophone
Charles Koechlin – Man of many talents, but composing won out.
Click on the link here for Audio Player: Charles Koechlin – L’Abbaye – 1952
Something a little different tonight. Back over to the mountain of French Radio Transcriptions, but rather than focus on orchestras or instrumentalists, I thought I would give something small and vocal a try.
One of the choral works of Charles Koechlin, a composer who is familiar to a lot of people, primarily through his Seven Stars Symphony. But he did a lot more than that. In fact, Charles Koechlin was an extremely prolific, not to mention very influential composer in the early 20th Century who even taught composition for a while at UC Berkeley.
This weekend it’s L’Abbaye for chorus, organ and string orchestra featuring the Chorus of Jeunesse Musicales de France, Marie-Louise Giraud, organ and the Lyric Orchestra of the French Radio conducted by Louis Martini in a broadcast recording made in 1952.
There has been one more recent recording (2004) of this work available, but I doubt this particular recording has been made available. And I don’t know of any others prior to the most recent one. Still, a very interesting piece – haunting and somewhat hypnotic.
Give it a try – not for all tastes, but see what happens. It may surprise you.
thank you so much for this discovery……for sure Koecklin did not write only the Bandarlogs !!!
As always, my pleasure!