Caplet le conteur

For most music lovers and musicians, the name André Caplet conjures up images of a great conductor with an international career, and an outstanding orchestrator who orchestrated several works by Claude Debussy. But when we talk about the composer André Caplet, many seem to be unaware of the rich catalogue of works he was able to write despite his premature death at the age of 46. Yet, as his masterpiece The Fantastic Tale shows, he was without doubt a brilliant composer with an art for storytelling and an exceptional knowledge of each instrument, which enabled him to skilfully set texts to music with total respect for prosody, to delicately combine different timbres, to create a wide palette of colours, and thus to depict a sound landscape that was at once warm, limpid and polished. From the deadpan humour of Trois fables to the pain of war transcended in Les Prières, his musical discourse is always of great sincerity whatever the subject, and it touches us like the voice of our parents, telling us stories while we were children. Let us hope that these pieces, some of which are still unpublished or little known, but recorded here, will give this storyteller-composer the true recognition he so richly deserves.

Reviews on... -> Première Loge Opéra - Pizzicato - Musique classique & Co - ON-mag - Télérama - Anaclase - Crescendo Magazine (BE) - Froggy's delight - Classica - Diapason

France Musique/En pistes ! - RCF/Tous mélomanes

Suite persane pour dixtuor à vent (1900)

La chanson la plus charmante pour voix et ensemble (1900)
« Viens ! une flûte invisible soupire » / Poème de Victor Hugo - Version orchestrée par le compositeur

Légende, poème symphonique pour ensemble avec saxophone principal (1903-1905)

Les Prières pour voix, harpe et quatuor à cordes (1914-1917)

Trois fables de La Fontaine pour voix et ensemble (1919)

Conte fantastique pour harpe et quatuor à cordes (1923) d’après Le Masque de la Mort rouge d’Edgar Allan Poe

Takénori Némoto - Musical direction
Cécile Achille - Soprano
Laurent Deleuil - Baryton
Iris Torossian - Harp
Émilie Heurtevent - Saxophone
Ensemble Musica Nigella