Corinna Simon - L'Album des Six - Music by French Avant-Garde Composers of Early 20th Century (2019) [Hi-Res]

In the 1920s, with Claude Debussy dead and Maurice Ravel in the ascendant, they became the darlings of the Parisian music scene. They appeared like a group of rebels determined to steer French music onto new paths. Their name might have belonged to a pop band: Les Six.

“We’ve had our fill of Debussy, Florent Schmitt and Ravel”, wrote Francis Poulenc. “What I have in mind is clear, healthy, robust music, music that is as obviously French as Stravinsky’s Petrushka is Russian.” The genesis of these hotheads dates back to the year 1917 and the ballet Parade, with music by Eric Satie, a scenario by Jean Cocteau, stage décor by Picasso and a production organised by the great impresario Diaghilev. It caused a fully-fledged scandal: several young musicians called “nouveaux jeunes” – Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Germaine Tailleferre – took up the cudgels for Satie. A year later they were joined by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. They all espoused a new aesthetic approach, as Milhaud recalled: “Following a concert in the Salle Huyghens [with works by Durey and Milhaud], the critic Henri Collet wrote an article with the title “Les cinq Russes et les six Français” [published on 16 January 1920]. He chose six names quite at random […] only because we knew each other well, were good friends and often appeared on the same programmes. […] But it was useless to protest. Collet’s article met with such worldwide interest that it gave birth to the group “Les Six”; and I was one of its members, whether I wanted to be or not.” ...

Corinna Simon, piano