Output details

Michael Finnissy: À propos de Nice

World premiere recording on Michael Finnissy: Unknown Ground (Metier, 2013), New Music Players (Roderick Chadwick, piano).

Michael Finnissy wrote the piano trio À propos de Nice to accompany the 1930 silent film of the same name by Jean Vigo. As with much music belonging to this genre, the salient question is whether it can enjoy an independent life as a concert piece and on an audio recording. Of course with the latter it is possible to recreate the multimedia effect at home. The film itself is a powerful piece of social commentary, juxtaposing images of deprivation and extravagance on the Riviera in a manner shared with but not tracked by the montage form of the music. Ed Hughes’s liner note aptly describes a “critical...neutrality of utterance”, but the vivid sounds – polarised between density and sparseness – prick away at the conscience, a commentary on whatever scene they coincide with (the performers are aware of the succession of images but play with a degree of freedom, concentrating upon navigating between independent tempi and strict ensemble). One could argue, therefore, that the replete nature of the experience is lost when the Vigo is absent. However, maintaining a social conscience is about failing to forget, and Finnissy’s music can be heard as a spectacularly powerful trace of social awareness, particularly within the context of this highly political and personal disc, which it is the performers’ responsibility to understand and render as vividly as possible. The long final section was worked on intensively with the composer during the recording process to achieve the requisite degrees of piano dynamic; it is a telling contrast with the belching chimney that concludes the Vigo, and a refusal to die that speaks back to other themes on the disc, and far beyond them.