JEAN PERRIN  - MUSIQUE CONCERTANTE

 

The works of the Swiss composer Jean Perrin rank among the gems of 20th-century music. The profound originality of these works, whose composer refused to follow the fashionable trends of the day, is finding more and more admirers today, twenty years after Perrin’s death. 

 

Jean Perrin was born in Lausanne on 17 September 1920. He began studying literature at the University and piano at the Conservatory in Lausanne at the same time, and concluded his studies with a licenciate and a virtuoso diploma. He then went on to Paris to study composition with Darius Milhaud and Nadja Boulanger. His music had nothing in common with that of the young serial composers who were then leaving their stylistic mark on contemporary composition. At best, one can describe Perrin’s compositional style as a kind of lyrical abstraction in music. Perrin devoted himself heart and soul to composition in part because he found in it the possibility of calming his own inner turmoil. Beyond this subjective aspect, however, the listener marvels at a new kind of beauty and stylistic coherence which endow the work with a unique expressiveness. Although his works were performed during his lifetime, they did not win much recognition. 

 

The present album documents a portion of Jean Perrin’s oeuvre. Subsidized and made possible by the Jean Perrin Foundation, this project underscores the composer’s broad compositional spectrum through the choice of the works on the recording.