Thomas de Hartmann PC, Scherzo Fantastique & Symphonie-Poème 3

[Alan Howe]

The new CD includes the Scherzo Fantastique (1929), the Symphonie-Poème No.3 (1953) and Piano Concerto (1939):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09WW8LK47/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My opinion: this is largely beyond our remit at UC - or, more accurately, it's continually popping over the line and then back again. The main culprit from our point of view here is dissonance. For an idea of the idiom, think perhaps of an exotic mixture of late Scriabin and Prokofiev.

I'll be frank: I don't like this music at all. I find, for example, the first movement of the Symphonie-Poème No.3 dark, oppressive and disturbing. I wonder how much of this feeling has to do with the composer's association with the oddball mystic George Gurdjieff.

For the time being, then, we'll leave this thread open and see what others think.

[Mark Thomas]

I've just been listening to this recording and I feel that this is definitely music of the 20th century, albeit in an idiom (or more accurately, a variety of idioms) which meld very late romanticism with mid-century atonality. It's sometimes attractively spikey, sometimes has a cloyingly over-ripe chromaticism, sometimes it's disturbingly dissonant, but always (to my ears anyway) unsettling and never stays for long in one style. I really don't think these pieces fit our criteria at all.

[Alan Howe]

I agree. Thanks for the confirmation, Mark.

[jimsemadeni]

Gosh, now I am terrified to listen to it! Thanks for the warning!

[Mark Thomas]

No, don't be. "Each to his own" and all that. I'm not saying that the music is bad, I'm not saying that I didn't like some of it (although I certainly didn't like all of it), but it just isn't UC-fare, that's all.