3 Chants d'Auverge

The most popular of Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne come from the four volumes of arrangements he compiled between 1925 and 1930. In a fifth volume added to the series in 1954 his affection for the music and the personalities of the shepherd community of the Auvergne seems to have lost something of its freshness. Postouro se tu m’ayme, however, is an exception, its chacterisation and its witty scoring being scarcely less appealing than in the earlier examples. Always a favourite, La delaïssado is based on a shepherdess’s lament so expressive that it is enhanced rather than overloaded by the weight of the instrumental treatment Canteloube applies to it. N’ai pas iéu de mio, which follows La delaïssado in Book 2, comes as a timely reminder of the delights of the bourrée d’Auvergne.