Amours interdites

In this remarkably well-varied collection of pieces, the French pianist David Kadouch sets the tone with a sprightly yet sensitive performance of Poulenc’s Improvisation “Hommage à Edith Piaf”. It’s a piece that hovers stylistically somewhere between the salon world of Chopin and the night clubs at which Piaf performed. Then follows Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”, extravagantly “paraphrased” by the legendary pianist/composer Percy Grainger. Kadouch’s flamboyant and seductive performance relishes its hedonistic and frankly sensual character. The composers in Kadouch’s programme, all LGBTQ+, were generally unable to express their love in public. For them, music was a safe haven where they might be true to themselves. But often the music is more subtle than the Grainger—sometimes there’s wistfulness, as in Poulenc’s “Mélancolie”, or brooding passion as in Ethel Smyth’s striking fragment “Aus der Jugendzeit!!”. There are also discoveries to be made. Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska’s previously unrecorded three pieces include a virtuosic and beguiling “Feu follet”. Most substantial and striking of all is Karol Szymanowski’s set of Variations on a Polish Folk Theme. This describes a dramatic arch, including a powerful and darkly Romantic funeral march (“Var. VIII”), ultimately ending in a finale with starts with effervescent triumph, then continues gravely with a solemn yet increasingly richly textured fugue.