专辑简介

During the first three decades of the 20th century, Paul Juon’s name could often be found in concert programs. Certain uncompromising music critics, never short of a double-edged epithet, recently described Juon as the ‘missing link’ between Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. Although this kind of characterization is the type that would normally kindle the interest of musical archeologists, half a century after his death most traces of him have completely disappeared. Apart from brief reviews of his work and passing references in encyclopedias there is no literature about his life and work. As in his life, his work is shadowed by homelessness: not Swiss, not Russian, not German; not Romantic, not Modernist, not Folklorist. He was a little of all these with the sum greater than the parts. He was a sincere with an impressively human personality.

Although he was born the same year as Alexander Scriabin (1872) and only two years older than Arnold Schoenberg, he neither overcame tonality, nor came in any way close to the twelve-tone system. Chronologically speaking, he belonged to that generation of painters, musicians and writers who created the foundation for Modernism, but he remained to the last committed to the traditions of the late-Romantics. Swiss folk music did not interest him; however, his musical language would be unthinkable without the influence of the Russian folk songs and dances from his formative years. Although he often seemed askew in his own time, the pleasure of his music today, for both performer and listener, can be explained in considerable part by his ‘domesticated’ Russian-ness. While his metrical experiments are given prominence time and again in the scholarly literature, for which some connect him to Stravinsky, greater attention is due to the powerful emotions, eminent expressiveness, intellectual depth and enchanting beauty of sound of his music.

This World Premiere recording allows the evolution of his style and musical language to be easily observed by including the very first opus Juon published in 1898 and the very last one composed for solo piano in 1933.