The latest release from the Takács Quartet feels a bit like a comprehensive homage to French 20th-century chamber music – weirdly so, given that a third of the music on it is 21st-century British. While planning this recording of Ravel’s 1903 String Quartet and Dutilleux’s 1976 Ainsi La Nuit, the Takács commissioned their sometime collaborator, pianist Stephen Hough, to compose a work specifically to complement those two masterpieces. The result is Les Six Rencontres – six short movements in which, treading just the right side of pastiche, Hough stylishly conjures up the 1920s Paris of the group of composers known as Les Six – Poulenc, Honegger, Tailleferre, Auric, Durey and Milhaud – not to mention of Cocteau, Diaghilev and Chanel.
