Album review: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dutilleux: Correspondances (Deutsche Grammophon)

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dutilleux: Correspondances (Deutsche Grammophon)

Esa-Pekka Salonen believes his former tutor Henri Dutilleux has written nothing but masterpieces for the past three decades, and this premiere recording of “Correspondances” does much to support his contention.

In “Correspondances” itself, soprano Barbara Hannigan sings texts by Rilke, Solzhenitsyn and others pertaining to the synaesthetic correspondences of the senses evoked by Dutilleux's orchestrations, reaching a sublime apogee soaring among the nighttime stars of a letter from Van Gogh to his brother Theo; elsewhere, the cello concerto “Tout un Monde Lointain” offers an absorbing, enigmatic chain of musical evocations, from the turbulent “Sea-Swells” to the becalmed symmetries of “Mirrors”.

Download: Correspondances; Tout un Monde Lointain; The Shadows of Time