Sauguet: Les trois quatuors

Album review

Henri Sauguet, whose name had almost completely disappeared from hoardings after his death in 1989, and who is now travelling through a kind of purgatory from which we hope he'll soon emerge, set down three pieces in quartet form, at three different times of his life, which correspond to "periods": at 26, in the first flush of an easy and natural talent, in writing led by instinct; then at 47, in the midst of a deepening maturity; and finally at the age of 78, in a dusk in which every hour, rather than mourning the lost light of day, marvels at the colours of the night. Each of the three is a success, such that the artisan's handiwork seems more practised each time, especially in the unique format of the string quartet, where artifice has to give way to the artist's sincerity and soul. Rather than resembling a kind of doubled-back arc (as is often the case with composers who refuse to change with changing times), the evolution from the First to the Third Quartet doesn't hold back from embracing a number of modernisms, from the frank and insouciant, almost Mendelsohnian, tonality of the First of 1927, to the intense language which often flirts with atonality of the last one in 1979, written in memory of painter Jacques Dupont, Sauguet's companion. By way of a pivot, 1948's Second is an ample reflection on mourning, specifically, mourning for his mother, who had passed away a while before. The excellent Stanislas Quartet, based in Nancy and whose discography runs to some thirty albums, several of which have won some of the most prestigious prizes, ventures here into a rarefied world, and their passion sweeps our hearts along with them. © SM/Qobuz