Anne Thursfield (mezzo-soprano) and Frank Mannheimer (pianoforte)
Anne Thursfield:
A Farewell
Light
Amoureux separes (parted Lovers)
AÂ un jeune gentilhomme (To a young man)
Frank Mannheimer:
Suite pour Pianoforte, Op. 14 (1. Prelude; 2. Sicilienne; 3. Bourree; 4. Rondo)
Anne Thursfield:
Invocation
Le Jardin Mouille (The bedewed garden) (de Regnier)
Sarabande
Le Bachelier de Salamanque (The Scholar of Salamanca)
Albert Roussel, who was born in the North of France in 1869, began his adult life as an officer in the French Navy, serving for five years before resigning his commission to devote himself seriously to the study of music. He first entered the Schola Cantorum, Vincent d'Indy's famous music school. Later, he became a professor at the Schola Cantorum, and gave himself wholly to teaching and composition; teaching, however, seems to have occupied a great deal of his time until recent years, and the list of his compositions is comparatively small. His work, however, is distinguished, decoratively coloured, and most delicately finished. He has written slowly and with great care symphonies, operas, chamber music, and orchestral ballets, which include two frequently heard in England, "The Feast of the Spider", based on Henri Fabre's fascinating life of that insect, and composed before the War, and "For a Spring Festival", composed in 1920. At the beginning of this year, his latest symphony had its first performance in England. Much of his music is tinged with an Eastern idiom, his treatment of which is authoritative and convincing.