A near-forgotten man of French music reappears with a piano retrospective [JW]

Lucien Wurmser (1877-1967)
Le dernier impressionniste
Nicola Giosmin (piano)
rec. undated, Vittorio Vella Delta Studios
Hortus 246 [80]

By a nice coincidence, eight of Lucien Wurmser’s 1911 recordings have been remastered and reissued by APR in a 3-CD set called ‘The earliest French piano recordings’, so we are able to hear his pianism in performances of Mozart, Chopin and hyphenated Schubert as well as two of his own pieces. The Hortus disc under review almost exclusively focuses on a later period in his compositional life, by which time – though still a recording artist – he was established as an august figure in Parisian musical circles. He was a conductor and film score composer and wrote reams of piano music, though details of his life seem to be very sketchy.

The disc isn’t programmed chronologically so one journeys back and forth from 1902 – by a long way the earliest piece here – to the very late Crépuscule, composed a year before his death, though Wurmser composed in clumps of time and unevenly over the years. Some are character studies, whilst others are competition pieces but almost all bear the stamp of, as the disc’s subtitle describes him, an impressionist of some imaginative reach.

Italian pianist Nicola Giosmin performs three of the six Études de concert et de concours (1947), the first a marine study demanding constant dappled wave-like motion, the second a fast wrist-stretching etude with a nobly contrasted B section and the third an octave study with vertiginous leaps. The three Concertinos, composed between 1937 and 1952, reveal different qualities. There’s the plush romanticism of the Concertino appassionato, the deft neo-classicism of the Concertino delicato and finally the very fanciful, very Gallic Concertino patetico. One of Wurmser’s lodestars was Debussy, and Crépuscule shows the indebtedness graphically. The Toccata is the only surviving piece form the second book of Études and it proves in Giosmin’s hands a spry Poulenc-spiced piece of wit.

Giosmin plays three extracts from the six pieces from Le gradus moderne which deal with questions of advanced technique but in a compressed sense of time – Mouvement doesn’t even reach 1:20. However, all three are framed in a deeply musical form so playing them is a question of absorbing their technical demands whilst projecting their lyrical and evocative qualities. The selected items from the 1954 set of Préludes all enjoy descriptive and pictorial titles, so evocation is never far away and nor is Debussy. These playful works offer a full range of impressionistic delights from caprice to plangent chording, from single-note obsession to graceful watercolours, and they’re cast on a more expansive canvas than Le gradus modern.

Interlude is one of the Trois pièces of 1966, a refined and brief affair, though on this showing I can’t really agree with Giosmin that it’s a ‘masterpiece’ though he, of course, is in a better position than I will ever be to pronounce on such things. A larger work is the very early Valse pittoresque of 1902, dedicated to Alfred Cortot, and full of rather extended youthful bravura. The disc ends appropriately with the reflective Solitude.

This is an attractively recorded and well documented disc with notes by Giosmin, who performs throughout with great panache and sensitivity. Having complete sets of works would have been admirable but would have deprived the listener of more from Wurmer’s work bench. I understand why Hortus made the decision and perhaps this disc will contribute to the rediscovery of Wurmser’s piano music, very little of which has been recorded.

Jonathan Woolf

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Availability (CD): Editions Hortus

Contents
Études de concert et de concours (1947) – extracts; Lightness: Aerobatics: Bravery   
Concertino appassionato (1939)
Concertino delicato (1952)
Concertino patetico (1937)
Ballade (1939)
Crépuscule (1966)
Toccata (1955)
Le gradus moderne (1960) – extracts; Movement: White butterflies: Arabesques
Préludes (1954) – extracts; The Campaign: Dreams: Whimsical: Fluidity: The Stubborn One: Ballerina
Interlude – extract from Trois pièces (1966) 
Valse pittoresque (1902)
Solitude (1923)