Emmanuel Ceysson / Véronique Gens / Quatuor Voce - Images: Hommage à Marcel Tournier

Marcel Tournier was a longtime professor at the Conservatoire de Paris, and those folks were notoriously conservative as composers, but it wasn't true in his case. His music has sometimes been recorded, but it has been followed mostly by harpists, and this 2025 release by Emmanuel Ceysson is rare in that it is for a semi-major label, France's Alpha, and aimed at general audiences. Tournier's music was not conservative in the least but was state-of-the-art for the early 20th century. 

The pieces entitled Images are pictorial but also suggest the influence of Debussy on his music, and one can hear bits of Satie and Ravel as well. He also wrote a work, not included here, called Jazz-Band for harp, Op. 33, and one would be intrigued to hear that. Tournier's music is intriguing in several further respects. He seems to have favored the combination of harp and string quartet, not simply as a way of incorporating the harp into a chamber group but as a fixed medium contrasting the percussive quality of the harp with the string textures. 

Tournier does write virtuoso passages, but they are always incorporated into the musical logic in a convincing way; sample the echoing opening measures of the "Lolita la danseuse" finale of the Images, Suite No. 1. He was an extremely skillful song composer, with a unique harp sound but also some intriguing texts like the gently sexy La lettre du jardinier ("The Letter of the Gardener"). There are four songs here, ideally rendered by Véronique Gens. Another attraction is Alpha's sound, recorded at the ideal Salle Colonne in Paris and catching many of the harp's subtler resonances. A marvelous album that will repay multiple hearings, and will introduce many listeners to a composer they had not known. AllMusicGuide