Les chats (Alexandre Rydin/ Charles Baudelaire)
Tête de faune (Alexandre Rydin/ Arthur Rimbaud)
Comptine de la chouette (Alexandre Rydin/ Anonyme)
Réhabilitation de la fourmi (Alexandre Rydin/ Joseph Autran)
Le hareng saur (Alexandre Rydin/ Charles Cros)
Les éléphants (Alexandre Rydin/ Leconte De Lisle)
Alexandre Rydin is a Finnish-Swedish-Swiss composer. His chosen poems (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Leconte de Lisle, Charles Cros), highlight discreet dissonances of sophisticated harmonies. Alexandre Rydin never uses harmony in excess and is very good at glorifying poems. The owl counting rhyme (no. 3) is an incredible strict canon of three parts. This piece is a perfect way of discovering these beautiful harmonies. 20th century composers (like Francis Poulenc, Jean Francaix, and Jean Absil for example) often wrote about bestiaries. In Alexandre Rydin’s pieces, bestiary is at times serious at time ironic but is always written with beautiful melodic sweep and sophisticated harmony.
