GABRIEL DUPONT (1878-1914): Les heures dolentes, La maison dans les dunes.

Description: The Symbolist exaltation of youth, beauty and death hangs like a heavy, intoxicating perfume over these works by a young composer who had his first case of pneumonia by the age of 12 and was to die of tuberculosis at 36. The ten-piece "The House in the Dunes" (1910) is one of two sets of piano pieces (around 95 minutes of music altogether) which show the composer's fixation with death, his suffering and his dreams of an unclouded life. Timpani offered a recording of this in Sept. 2003 (09F037). The other is "Doleful Hours" of 1903-05 (14 pieces), composed during and after Dupont's recovery from the first onslaught of his disease. 2 CDs. Stéphane Lemelin (piano).