Albert Roussel - Noted French Piano Composer and Teacher

 


Rod Westmoreland serves as managing director of wealth management at Merrill Lynch, overseeing the firm’s Atlanta Buckhead office. A classical music aficionado, Rod Westmoreland supports the Atlanta Chamber Players, a mixed ensemble of piano, winds, and strings that has been in existence for four decades.

The Players opened their 2016 season in September with a concert themed “Quickly Composed Trios.” The performance included the world premiere of Mark Buller’s Motion Studies, as well as Ludwig van Beethoven’s Archduke Trio. Also performed was Albert Roussel’s trio for flute, viola and cello, Op. 40, which he composed in just over two weeks in 1929.

Born in 1869 in France, Roussel started his career under the influence of French impressionism and created pieces rich in poetic association. This ultimately gave way to a mature style in which formal design was preeminent, with a rhythmic drive that exceeded most contemporaries. His approach reflects a schooling heavy in composers such as J. S. Bach, who emphasized contrapuntal textures.

By the mid-1920s, Roussel had turned toward neoclassicism, in which themes were clearly developed in order and a sense of the theatrical predominated. Today, Roussel is known as well for the students he instructed in composition as for his original works. His students at various times included Edgard Varèse, Erik Satie, and Bohuslav Martinu.