Chez Chausson

Every eager collector of books and scores has their special searcher, primed to keep an eye open for long out-of-print rarities at reasonable prices. Mine, like Jesus’ blood, ‘never failed me yet’. Her latest triumph is to have procured a copy of Ernest Chausson’s opera Le roi Arthus, posthumously produced in 1903, four years after his death at 44; never yet staged in this country, though there was a memorable concert performance at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago. I’d been on the lookout for the music for ages, and its eventual arrival brought down from the shelf the fraying tape of a previous recording dating back to 1987, to listen again to a work of rare nobility.

Chausson is in danger of being remembered as a one-work composer: and even that one work, the lovely poème for violin and orchestra, isn’t played nearly so frequently as it used to be and always deserves.