• Darkness and devilry lurk in the shadows of the latest recording by the UK-based French pianist Emmanuel Despax: Après un Rêve: Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano (Signum Classics). Embracing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Cécile Chaminade’s Nocturne and Henri Duparc’s Aux étoiles, the mood is sensuous, the choice irresistible, but menace lies in wait. This beguiling tour of nocturnal French music dates from the turn of last century, spanning Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre (1875) to Francis Poulenc’s Les Soirées de Nazelles (1930-36), a substantial, unsettling work in 11 sections. Despax has recorded Bach, Brahms, Chopin, but the works here particularly suit his sensibility. In Maurice Ravel’s haunting masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit, he masters the ferocious challenges with ease, delicacy, strength. As a tribute to his grandfather, the poet Jacques Charpentreau, Despax has selected texts for reading alongside the music.
