Les Bandar-Log (Scherzo des singes), symphonic poem for orchestra, Op. 176
Offrande musicale sur le nom de BACH, Op. 187
It's possible, but, because of its tremendous intellectual complexity, it is not necessarily easy to love Charles Koechlin's music. Hänssler Classics should be commended for their series of recordings of Koechlin's music in general, and for this disc combining two of his most imposing orchestral scores: Les Bandar-log and Offrande musicale sur le non de BACH. The former is a 20-minute scherzo taking as its subject matter an episode from Kipling's Jungle Book involving monkeys and music; apparently, if you put enough monkeys ...
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It's possible, but, because of its tremendous intellectual complexity, it is not necessarily easy to love Charles Koechlin's music. Hänssler Classics should be commended for their series of recordings of Koechlin's music in general, and for this disc combining two of his most imposing orchestral scores: Les Bandar-log and Offrande musicale sur le non de BACH. The former is a 20-minute scherzo taking as its subject matter an episode from Kipling's Jungle Book involving monkeys and music; apparently, if you put enough monkeys in a room long enough, they'll create everything from tonality to atonality to polytonality. The latter is a nearly 50-minute-long compendium of virtually anything and everything that can be done contrapuntally with the pitches B flat, A, C, and B natural (B-A-C-H in German musical nomenclature). Both works require listeners' undivided attention. Without it, it's too easy to get lost in Les Bandar-log's multiple monkey fugues, and in the Offrande musicale's manifold mazes of...
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