The third volume in Nicolas Horvath’s project to record the complete piano works of French composer Jean Catoire shows a return to the longer durations encountered in the five compositions that constituted the first volume of the set. Once again, this third volume is available from Amazon.com only through a Web page for MP3 download; but the good news is that this download includes the booklet that presents an informative and extended essay by Lawerence Ball, followed by a briefer statement by Horvath. (That booklet was also the source for the musical example I reproduced for my discussion of Volume 2.)
Each of the first three CDs in Volume 3 is filled with a single composition. These pieces are, respectively Opus 224 (a little over an hour), Opus 256 A (a little over 50 minutes), and Opus 278 (about an hour and fifteen minutes). The remaining CD includes Opus 283 (a little less than nine minutes) followed by Opus 296 A (about 35 minutes).
Opus 224 has a subtitle (in French that is easily read in English): “XXe étude sur le chromatisme B.A.C.H.” Thus far I have not been able to track down any of the preceding études. However, this is the first piece I have encountered in this collection that seems to have been structured around the chord progressions of a chorale. Thus, to the extent that Catoire continues to deploy stepwise movement as a “building block,” in Opus 224 such movement tends to be found in the inner voices of those progressions. Since half-steps tend to dominate over whole-steps, once can perceive some sense of chromatic movement that one might encounter in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. How great of a stretch of the imagination this entails is left as an exercise for the reader!
Opus 278 also has a subtitle: “Et lux perpetua luceat eis.” My guess is that most readers will recognize this as text for the opening section of the Requiem. Like Opus 224 it is structured as series of chord progressions. I find it a bit ironic that Bach never composed a setting of that particular Latin text. (However, I associate with the camp that takes any of his settings of Latin text to serve a strictly pedagogical role as musical examples, since they clearly would have nothing to do with the Lutheran services for which he composed his cantatas!) The other feature of Opus 278 that distinguishes the piece is that the stepwise movement is now an alternating one, either up-and-down or down-and-up.
The other description attached to a title is that for Opus 296 A. This is labeled as an étude for fifths and thirds. In this case the horizontal movement continues to be dominated by half-steps. However, the intervals in the description can be found in the simultaneities. Thus, the subtitles provide a means by which each of these three compositions both distinguishes and differentiates itself, making it clear that Catoire was sensitive enough to seek out uniquely distinctive features for each of his compositions. This is also the case even in the brevity of Opus 283. (To be fair, however, I must confess that I am still trying to tease out what those features are for Opus 256 A!)
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