Koechlin's 12 Pastorales inhabit such a rare demesne of pristine, radiant innocence that one would never guess they were composed between 1916 and 1920 -- that is, during the most ghastly of the war years and the beginning of the jazz age. Nor did the independently wealthy Koechlin, often accused of living in an ivory tower, evade the horrors of the war, serving as an ambulance driver while his wife Suzanne donated her skills as a nurse. Despite that, the Pastorales are a gentler continuation of the pre-lapsarian vision of the Esquisses, Op. 41 (1905-1915), and the Cinq Sonatines, Op. 59 (1915-1916). But the knack of finding such complete refuge in flights of imagination was not always reliable and attempts to recapture the rapture of the earlier piano works in the four Nouvelles Sonatines, Op. 87 (1923-1924), are laced with nostalgia and regret. The title, Pastorales, suggests the world of Virgilian pastoral, another node of feeling to which Koechlin returned often -- as in the Flute Sonata, Op. 52 (1911-1913), with its movement titles drawn from the "Eclogues," the "Poème virgilien," the final number of Paysages et marines, Op. 63 (1915-1916), or the Chants de Nectaire, Op. 199 (1944) -- though Koechlin's Virgilian music, however vivacious, seems haunted by an immemorial antiquity, where the immediacy of the Pastorales bespeak the enchantment of the forest of Arden, fresh and glistening. Here, Koechlin is at his most melodically inventive and attractive, though anything like a hummable tune or the visceral appeal of operatic melody would be jarring and gross in such an airy, subtly refined aural environment. Like the Esquisses, most of the Pastorales are very brief, several playing less than a minute, and the longest, the final Allegro, playing a little over two minutes, yet all are so imbued with Koechlin's unique prehension that each delivers considerable expressive cargo while suggesting more -- rather like sage aphorisms or gnomic utterances. The first Pastorale, for instance, Assez calme, suggests an amiable amble into another aural dimension, while the second, with its ingratiating melodic flight, seems to stroll from under the greenwood tree's shadow into blinding light, as the essentially tonal conception is rounded off with bitonal inflections lending a thrill of cool luminosity. Published by Senart in 1923, a half-dozen (unspecified) Pastorales received a premiere over Radio Paris on March 2, 1954, by Henriette Puig-Roget, while the set complete was heard only on June 20, 1982, performed by Julien Ridoret for the Koechlin Festival at Ville d'Avray. ~ Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide
