Les Heures persanes

Ralph van Raat performs Persian Hours at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Nov. 2012

Les Heures persanes (English: The Persian Hours), Op. 65, is one of the most famous works of the French composer Charles Koechlin.

It is based on the French novelist and traveller Pierre Loti’s Vers Ispahan, detailing his journey across Persia. Koechlin’s hour-long work is a series of pieces - condensed into just two-and-a-half days - that captures and distils the scents and sounds of this faraway land.^[1]

The Persian Hours includes 16 pieces for piano composed between 1913 and 1919. Koechlin prepared an orchestral version of the piece as well.

The Persian Hours is a difficult work to record. It is an atmospheric work, mostly very slow and dreamy, and except for three or four movements (Travers les Rues; the mini-tone-poem Le Conteur; and the final Dervishes dans la nuit) is often extremely quiet. The orchestration is delicate and subtle, and it is entirely typical of Koechlin that although the piece is harmonically extremely audacious for its time (1913–19), the music is so subdued that its frequent polytonal or atonal basis might not be immediately apparent.^[2]

Movements

1. Sieste, avant le depart
2. La caravane (reve, pendant la sieste
3. L’escalade obscure
4. Matin frais, dans la haute vallee
5. En vue de la ville
6. A travers les rues
7. Chant du soir
8. Clair de lune sur les terrasses
9. Aubade
10. Roses au soleil de midi
11. A l'ombre, pres de la fontaine de marbre
12. Arabesques
13. Les collines, au coucher du soleil
14. Le conteur
15. La paix du soir, au cimetiere
16. Derviches dans la nuit — Clair de lune sur la place deserte

References