title: Still today an entirely valid offering - despite problems with some of the transfers and fillers

text:
Serge Baudo's complete traversal of Honegger's Symphonies with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra for Supraphon was an important landmark in the LP era, and first of all because it was the first one. It received the universal accolades back then - but there was far less competition than today. When the cycle started being recorded, in 1960, there was only (excluding less than a handful of recordings from the 78rpm era) Munch in Symphonies No. 2 and 5 ([[ASIN:B00000E6MK Milhaud: La Creation du monde Op. 81; Suite Provencale: Honegger: Symphonies No. 2 & 5]]), Tzpine in 3 and 4 (not reissued on CD), Bour in 2 (ditto) and a few others and today forgotten in 2 and 3, and Markevitch in 5 ([[ASIN:B000001GXH Milhaud: Les Choéphores / Honegger: Symphony No. 5 / Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane]]) - and all in mono. Baudo's First Symphony may have been a recording premiere, even as late as 1973 when it was made: another version was published in the early months of 1974, by Michel Tabachnik and Orchestre National on the obscure French label Barclay's/Inédits de l'ORTF, never reissued on CD, and the exact recording date was not provided. Anyway a lot of water has flown under the bridges since and many new versions have been recorded, including Karajan's famous versions of Symphonies 2 & 3 in 1969 ([[ASIN:B00000E3YY Honegger: Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique", Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra and Trumpet]]), Munch's remake of 2 with Orchestre de Paris ([[ASIN:B00005NW08 Ravel: Bolero; Rapsodie Espagnole; Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2/Honegger: Symphony No. 2]]) and 4 with Orchestre National ([[ASIN:B00006DICB Honegger: Symphony No. 4 / Dutilleux: Metaboles]]) both in 1967, Symphonies 2 to 4 by Ansermet and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1961 for Symph. No. 2 and 1968 for the two others, [[ASIN:B0075480RY Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 & 4 / Martin: In terra pax]]), the complete traversals of Plasson in 1977-79 and Dutoit in 1982 & 1985 and everything that appeared in the CD era. Yet Baudo remains an entirely valid offering still today.

As already hinted his cycle wasn't recorded all at once but over a long span of time, first Symphonies 2 & 3 in 1960 (predating Karajan's famous recording by almost a decade), then Symphony No. 5 in 1963 (with Pacific 231, Pastorale d'été and Chant de Joie as complements, of which only Pacific is reissued here), and with the two missing symphonies, No. 1 & 4, coming as belated additions from 1973. The two complements, "Mouvement symphonique No. 3" and the Prelude to Shakespeare's "The Tempest" are later recordings, from 1986. They served as complements to Baudo's recording of "King David", [[ASIN:B00008FTYM Honegger: Le Roi David/Baudo]].

Unexpectedly, the sonic quality here doesn't follow the chronology of recordings - in fact, it contradicts it. Baudo leads an excellent First Symphony, with a first movement that is suitably urgent, full of bite, aggressive and even nasty, but in these transfers the 1973 sonics are curiously distant and tubby, as if heard from miles away, and metallic, which hampers full enjoyment. It turns out that it is less a problem with the original pickup than with the transfer. A recent Japanese reissue of the complete symphonies, [[ASIN:B00018H05O HONEGGER:COMPLETE OF SYMPHONY WORKS]], offers perfectly fine sound - but see more about this vexed issue at the end of the review. The second movement would have been fine, but the all-important accompanying figure of trombone glissandi is barely audible. But the Finale is excellent and there the sonic shortcomings that had bothered me in the first two movements do not any more, maybe because the orchestration is centered more on brass and woodwinds than strings. Baudo's Czech "blowers" play with great instrumental character, and their touch of crudeness is here perfectly in situation.

On the other hand the 1960 sonics afforded to Symphony No. 2 are superb (and I don't care the small measure of tape hiss), and Baudo offers, in the first movement, a great combination of the brooding and the biting. In fact I prefer his first movement to Karajan's, Baudo is as brooding and he is more biting. Likewise his finale has great urgency and bite, and the trumpet is perfect, not as embedded in the violins' texture as with Karajan (which is very legitimate and faithful to Honegger's original intention, which was to sustain the first violins' chorale melody so that it didn't get covered by the polyphony of same-timbre strings) but not a vulgarly prominent as with many other versions. The minor disappointment here is Baudo's second movement: it is eloquent but doesn't have the intensity either of the more urgent Munch (both in Boston in 1953 and in fine mono and Paris in 1967 in great stereo) or the more spacious and dirge-like Karajan: matter of surrounding sonics and orchestral body, but also of intensity with which the bows dig into the strings, and expressivity of the phrasings. With Baudo's Czech Philharmonic the notes are played, with Munch and Karajan they are sung, even wept (with Munch) or moaned (with Karajan). Nonetheless, what is perceptible on direct comparison probably won't heard on its own.

In Symphony "Liturgique" (No. 3), Baudo offers a furious first movement "Dies Irae", ticking off a full minute over Honegger (a recording made in circa 1948 with an unnamed orchestra, but I've exhausted my 10 authorized product links, see comments section) or Munch (live with the Boston Symphony in Prague in 1956) and almost as much over Karajan, a perfect realization of Honegger's own description, "the day of wrath, the explosion of force and of hatred which destroys everything and leaves nothing but debris and ruins. The hurricane sweeps everything away, blindly and angrily. For the listener there is no time to breathe or think...". The Czech Philharmonic, exposed by superb sonics, plays with tremendous vehemence and awesome virtuosity of every section. Despite Mravinsky live in 1965 with the Leningrad Philharmonic (with cruder and more brutal brass) and Järvi in 1992, only Jansons in 1993 equaled that degree of fury and breathlessness. The Finale is excellent too, with fine instrumental character and potent brass, although just a touch short of the kind of 1,000-volt tension generated, through opposite musical means, by Mravinsky (urgent tempo, crude and brutal brass) and Karajan in 1969 (very deliberate tempo, in fact the only version to be spot on Honegger's metronome indication, and massive dynamics). It's a detail, but very typical that the drum ("caisse roulante", the score calls it, e.g. the tenor drum) with its syncopated off-beats at 5:03 can barely be heard: when it is, it is a huge tension-generator, as the similar passages in Nielsen's Fifth Symphony or Shostakovich's 11th (but apparently, in all the versions where it DOES register, like Munch's, Karajan's or Mravinsky's, a snare drum rather than a tenor drum is used). I find the long slow movement ("De profundis clamavi...") problematic, but it isn't Baudo's fault. The composer himself said it had given him much trouble, trying as he was to develop a melodic line without using the customary methods and formulas, one that would "go forward without looking back", extending "the initial curve without repetition or stops". But where Mahler masterfully succeeded, especially in his 9th symphony (I am mentioning Mahler because looking at the way the music is laid down on the score, it looks very much like a Mahler orchestration), to my ears Honegger fails, because his material and moods sound naïve and tritely pastoral in the manner of the Christmas Cantata ("how hard it is to put a prayer without hope into human mouths"), making the movement seem (to my ears) overlong and diffuse. But I can't fault Baudo with the way he conducts it (except for the Czech Philharmonic's very nasal and reedy oboe), just a hair slower than the composer's metronome indication, which is still more animated than how Honegger conducted it in his own recording (very pedestrian), with great clarity and transparency of instrumental textures, and building the climaxes to fine vehemence. That said, I find that more extreme approaches work even better: Karajan's extreme spaciousness, which slowly unfolds the music like a calm and powerful river, or the dramatic urgency of Mravinsky and Munch (and the small cut exercised by the latter does no harm either).

Baudo also offers a fine Fourth, with clear and detailed sonics that, in the first movement, never let the woodwinds be covered by the strings and always let you follow the circulation of the melodies from one orchestral section to the other and lend great instrumental character to brass and woodwinds. I like that Baudo takes a "lento" introduction to the first movement that is slightly more expansive than Honegger's metronome and than the pacing of Munch and Ansermet, and hence more atmospheric, and establishes more of a contrast with the ensuing Allegro. There, I appreciate that Baudo, unlike Munch or Plasson, doesn't take every excuse to slow down and play stop and go with the tempi (in particular at 4:08 when comes the second, lyrical theme played by flute, where Honegger indicates no tempo change), but maintains the forward flow and, with it, the cogency of the architecture. In truth, he doesn't really observe Honegger's subtle variations of tempo, with a basic Allegro and a slight relaxation of it at various points (for instance at 3:19), but it is always in favor of dynamism and sparkle. "Deliciae Basilienses", the "Delights of Basel", may be, especially in its first movement, one of Honegger's most playful, gentle and pastoral works, but it is not a reason to let it go slack and mellow, on the contrary. Yet, if there was one small criticism to level at Baudo or rather his sound engineer, it is that everything sounds almost TOO exposed and big-sounding, as if trying to flaunt its effects. However, Baudo's "Chinese Bells" passage at 5:56 (that's how it sounds to me... maybe they are Basel Bells, but even the great Honegger critic Harry Halbreich likens the passage to "gamelans") lacks a touch of brilliance perhaps. Following the lead of Munch (though not as extreme as the Alsatian conductor), Baudo takes the slow movement, "Larghetto", at a tempo slower than Honegger's metronome mark, highlighting its character of a Funeral March. But Baudo stands out for the bite of articulation he demands of his basses in the quasi-Passacaglia march motto that opens the movement and runs through it, and for the vehemence of his expression throughout. The theme of the pseudo folk song (by Franz Abt) "s'Basel an mim Rhy", entoned by the horns at 4:35, could have stood out a little more. Again Baudo's Finale benefits from the great sonics and the orchestra's great instrumental character, with particularly glaring and incisive brass.

The Fifth Symphony benefits again from great 1963 stereo sonics, a major and essential improvement over all the previous recordings, Munch in Boston (as good as were RCA's sonics for their 1953 vintage) and Markevitch in 1957, and an essential one in this composition, given the importance of the solo instruments in the orchestration. The only miss is the entry of the second trumpet at 3:26 with its tight repeated note rhythmic figure that opens the harmonic rise leading to the movement's climax, almost inaudible (the first trumpet at 3:40 IS perfectly audible, as it should be). But it's not just the sonics: Baudo also conducts a fine version, crisp and biting, similar to Munch's 1953 pioneering recording with Boston in the first movement but more tight and taut than him in the second where Baudo is in fact very similar to the same Munch, but live with Orchestra National in 1964 (a recording originally published by Disques Montaigne). The more leisurely and playful approach (also followed by Dutoit) certainly has its legitimacy and is possibly closer to what the composer had in mind, but it generates less excitement. Again Baudo leads a Finale of great urgency and excitement.

Pacific 231, recorded at the same sessions a the 5th Symphony back in 1963, is also an excellent version, quite unique among the competition from before or after in its bite and nastiness, less a locomotive slowly rolling up to (high) speed than a remake from Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice, and with sonics that allow for details to come through that are blurred in a dozen other versions that I've heard (and with even more impact if you can turn up the volume at a high level). Bernstein's 1962 recording has the edge, because of its even superior sonics and the touch of added drive of the conducting, but Baudo's remains one of the great recordings of the piece. Baudo's Mouvement Symphonique No. 3 is the best of all modern recordings available on CD, the only one that can compete with the great versions of the 1950s, Furwängler live in 1952, Scherchen in 1954 and Tzipine in 1955 (the latter lamentably not reissued on CD). Like Furtwängler and Tzipine, Baudo takes a rather expansive view, on the opposite pole from the raging fury of Scherchen, but he fills it with gruff vigor. The presence, glare and relative crudeness of the brass is here much more in situation than the more comfortable sonics and tamed dramatic impact of the later and disappointing versions of Dutoit or Zinman.

A pity Baudo never recorded "Rugby", the "Mouvement Symphonique No. 2" (composed in 1928) which is the central piece of the triptych represented by "Pacific 231" ("Mouvement symphonique No. 1", 1923) and "Mouvement symphonique No. 3" (1932/3). But as much as I understand the interest of grouping together Baudo's two remaining Mouvements, I don't think it was a clever choice of Supraphon. It entails, for those who have the CD set with King David, an irksome duplication, with the additional cost of the loss of the two complements from the original Supraphon LPs, the two early symphonic poems "Pastorale d'été" and "Chant de Joie". Supraphon finally reissued the missing Pastorale and Chant de Joie, either individually (see [[ASIN:B000PG8506 Honegger : Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique" Symphony No. 5 "Di Tre Re" Pacific 231 [RARE]]]) or in the new Japanese reissue of the complete symphonies already mentioned above. But those like me who bought this original CD reissue aren't likely to want to reinvest. Remains the download option, [[ASIN:B0090VNAT8 Honegger: Symphonies No. 3 Liturgique and No. 5, Pacific 231]], and the two bucks it costs won't make a deep hole in anybody's pocket, but unfortunately the option is not offered where I live.

For newcomers however, the new Japanese reissue would seem the best option, as the price demanded for it on the marketplace, as I write, is still (by my standards) affordable. Things aren't so simple alas. Other than offering "Pastorale" and "Chant de Joie", the new reissue has considerably improved the sonics of the First Symphony, and that's a huge plus. But, incomprehensibly, those for the other symphonies are not as clear, present and vivid as those of the earlier set here in review. It is for the transfer of the Fourth Symphony that I find the situation totally incomprehensible. It was recorded in 1973, the same year as Symphony No. 1 (although the new set wrongly claims 1960, and gives 1973 for Symphony No. 2, but looking at old Schwann catalogs proves that this is wrong) and you'd think they'd be subjected to the same sonic treatment by the engineers responsible with the respective transfers. Yet I hear none of the sonic problems that mar the First Symphony in the set under review. On the other hand, while the transfer of Symphony No. 1 on the new Japanese set is a huge improvement over this one, the one for Symphony No. 4 is a total miss: the level is very low, making it sound almost mono and causing it to loose most of its presence and impact.

So, despite the sonic problems of Symphony No. 1 and the loss of the two early symphonic poems, this is, as frustrating as it may be, the issue to favor. It remains today the best complete cycle of Honegger's Symphonies. Dutoit is generally fine though generally lacking the touch of bite, rawness, even brutality that the works require, but his Second is a total miss. Plasson offers great No. 1 and 2 (the latter however is the only version I've heard that does WITHOUT the "ad libitum" trumpet in the Finale) and a fine "Liturgique", but his 4th and 5th are deeply flawed. The more recent Fabio Luisi with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (recorded in 1999), other than the ludicrous price now demanded for it on the marketplace, suffers from the conductor's uniformly slow tempi everywhere, almost a gimmick. I haven't heard the recent Roman Brogli-Sacher with the Lübeck Symphony Orchestra on Musicaphon (the individual symphonies were recorded between 2007 and 2010 and have just been regrouped on a 2-CD set, which is not even yet listed on this website).


title: Fine Fourth, disappointing Second

text:
Is "slower" progress or regress? Either way, you can't stop it, and Dutoit conducts the slowest introductory "molto moderato" to Honegger's Second Symphony I've ever heard - if only by a minuscule margin over Baudo in 1960 ([[ASIN:B000025R6S Honegger-Symphonies [Complete]]]) or Munch in 1942/4 ([[ASIN:B00009WVLI France Resistante]]), more than ten beats under the composer's metronome indication (in fact metronomes don't descend that low). Not that I'm complaining, the music can take that brooding and mourning mood, although Dutoit leaves me with the lingering impression that he's overdoing it.

But with the ensuing Allegro proper, at 2:33, begins disappointment. Dutoit's complete Honegger Symphonies was an important cycle in the early days of the CD (3 & 5 were recorded in 1982, [[ASIN:B000WM56ZK Honegger: Symphonies 3 & 5; Charles Dutoit]], and the cycle was completed in 1985, with this and [[ASIN:B000005E63 Arthur Honegger: Symphony No. 1 / Pastorale d'Été / Pacific 231 / Rugby / Symphonic Movement No. 3, to Wilhelm Furtwängler - Charles Dutoit]]) and not only because it was the first one available on the new medium and in digital sound. Dutoit's other offerings, Symphonies No. 1, 3 and 5, were interpretively excellent too, even though the sonics were always somewhat too comfortable, the brass a little too mellow and lacking a touch of presence, vividness, rawness, glare, impact, even brutality, for these works that should never sound comfortable, but aggressive and angry.

But Dutoit's Symphony No. 2 is not on the same level, alas. With the first attacks of double basses and cellos it is clear that he is going for weight and deliberation rather than the kind of angry bite brought to the music by Munch, Baudo or Plasson ([[ASIN:B0000CE7FR Honegger: Symphonies #1-5, Pacific 231; Michel Plasson; Orchestre du Capitole du Toulouse]]). Timings tell at least part of the story and Dutoit conducts the longest first movement I've ever heard (and I've heard nearly twenty different recordings). That phenomenal bite of attack AND deliberation can go together was shown by the contemporary recording of Rozhdestvensky (see my review of [[ASIN:B0002I692I A.Honegger - Symphony No.2, Phedre: Suite for the Tragedy by d'Annunzio, Three extracts from film 'Napoleon']]). Dutoit's first movement doesn't convey as sluggish an impresion as Ansermet's (Ansermet is overall faster, but only because he drives the slow pasages faster, [[ASIN:B0075480RY Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 & 4 / Martin: In terra pax]]), but it's in that direction. It is a reading that lacks drama, intensity, rage, fury, and here again the slightly too comfortable and distant sonics contribute by giving it a sense of elegance rather than drama. Honegger's Symphony for strings should be dramatic, not elegant: it was written in 1941 as a cry of revolt against German occupation of France, not a tribute to Paris Gay Paris under German rule.

You can commend Dutoit's slow movement for being the closest of all versions available on CD to Honegger's metronome mark, but again I find the result quite disappointing: it makes the music sound blandly middle of the road, neither passionately urgent like Munch nor mourningly slow like Karajan's ([[ASIN:B00000E3YY Honegger: Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique", Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra and Trumpet]]) or Plasson's. But worse still is that again the sonics deprive it of any intensity and drama, leaving the listener, so to speak, as if listening through a closed window. I still have an old scratching version on LP with Jean-François Paillard and his chamber orchestra playing the same Symphony for strings (already on Erato - sadly it has never been reissued on CD) and his choice of tempos here is strikingly similar to Dutoit's, but the leaner and more translucent textures of his chamber orchestra and much more vivid sonics generate incomparably more tension than Dutoit. A number of other versions - Ansermet, Plasson, Rozhdestvensky, Paillard, even Munch with Orchestre de Paris ([[ASIN:B00005NW08 Ravel: Bolero; Rapsodie Espagnole; Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2/Honegger: Symphony No. 2]]) - have proven that it is possible to bring great tension to the finale even at an unrushed tempo, if it is offset with great robustness of articulation. Sadly Dutoit has the unrushed tempo but not the robustness and, hence, the tension. Again the impression is of (slightly soporific) elegance rather than drama.

Dutoit's reading is probably not as bad as I make it sound. But in this highly competitive field, there are so many much better ones to choose from - all those of Munch, Baudo's, Karajan's, Rozhdestvensky's - that it makes this one a non-runner.

Too bad, really, because on the other hand the Swiss conductor offers a fine 4th Symphony. In the first movement his tempos are always flowing and the mood appropriately unsentimental, but more important still he gets the tempo relationships right and keeps Honegger's subtle and delicate architecture cogent, eschewing the kind of stop and go and accordion-playing with tempo that mars, for instance, the first movement of Munch, in his 1967 recording with Orchestre National ([[ASIN:B00006DICB Honegger: Symphony No. 4 / Dutilleux: Metaboles]])). Of equal importance is that the textures are pellucid, the strings gossamer (those of Plasson are so thick as to cover all the rest), woodwinds never covered so that the ear can always follow how the counter-melodies run from one woodwind to the other, and the music makes its effect with no undue spotlighting (as the sonics tend to do with Baudo). The price to pay may be a lack of vividness and impact of the brass and woodwinds, but this very gentleness suits the music well. Following the lead of Munch, although not to the same extreme, Dutoit conducts the middle Larghetto at a slower tempo than Honegger's metronome mark, highlighting its funeral march character. His Bavarian basses do not articulate with the same bite as Baudo's Czech players in the quasi-passacaglia rhythm that opens the movement and underpins it, but his violins are very soft and lyrical, and the sonics afford great clarity on the woodwind filigree. Dutoit takes the Finale at a tempo slightly faster than Honegger's rather deliberate metronome and than the norm of every one else save Munch (who was even more urgent), drawing unexpected relations with the symphonies of Kurt Weill. His Finale is excellent, my only small reservation being again that his brass are a little too mellow and lacking glare and incisiveness.

Too bad really for the disappointing 2nd. It is the weak point of an otherwise fine cycle.


title: Excellent versions, lacking only a touch of rawness, impact and brutality to belong to the very best

text:
Recorded in 1982 and the first leg of a traversal of Honegger's symphonies which was completed in 1985, Dutoit leads an excellent "Liturgique" (Symph. No. 3), eschewing the extremes of both (on two opposite and extreme poles) Karajan (deliberate and massive) and Mravinsky (hectic tempi and brutal brass), in favor of a very balanced and middle-of-the-road approach, always true to Honegger's metronome indications (which the composer himself did not always follow in his recording from circa 1948), and lacking, to belong of the very best (Mravinsky, Järvi, Jansons, and on the other interpretive pole Karajan) only a hair of instrumental presence, potency and bite (product links at the end of the review). His 5th is also a fine performance, it too just a hair short of being a great one. I have nothing but praise for the first movement, tempo, character, playing, sonics, everything is right. When comes the second movement (a combination of Scherzo and slow movement), Dutoit conducts it with more bonhomie than bite and urgency, true to the model established by Munch in his pioneering 1953 recording with Boston, but on the opposite pole from Baudo in 1963 or Munch live in 1964. The approach is certainly legitimate and possibly closer to what Honegger had in mind when composing, but it generates less excitement. Dutoit's woodwinds play with fine crispness but his brass fanfare at 5:06 lacks glare and impact. Likewise, his Finale has all the trappings of a great one, tempo is right and suitably urgent and everybody plays well, but what's missing is a touch of elemental rawness: here the sonics are a tad too comfortable and spacious, the brass have slightly too much timbral polish. It's like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring: if you loose the brutality (as many orchestras do today because the music has simply become way to easy and comfortable for them), you loose the very essence of the music.

You might not get with Dutoit the unique personality of a Karajan or a Mravinsky (in Liturgique) or a Rozhdestvensky (in the 5th Symphony), or even, in Liturgique, the breathless tension of Järvi or Jansons, but you will not go wrong with these two excellent performances, which serve Honegger well. Be aware however that, if you are looking specifically for that pairing, Järvi's performances on Chandos are outstanding ones, with the touch of added bite, anger and instrumental potency that Dutoit is missing, and offers too boot a great reading of Pacific 231.

Here are the links to the other versions mentioned in the review:

- Honegger conducting an unnamed orchestra, circa 1948, [[ASIN:B000006KFY La Tempete / Pacific 231 / Rugby]]

- Charles Munch, Symphony No. 2 (1952) & 5 (1953) with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, [[ASIN:B00000E6MK Milhaud: La Creation du monde Op. 81; Suite Provencale: Honegger: Symphonies No. 2 & 5]]

- Serge Baudo, 1960 (Liturgique) and 1963 (Symph. 5), part of his complete cycle, [[ASIN:B000025R6S Honegger-Symphonies [Complete]]]

- Charles Munch, Symphony No. 2 & 5, Orchestre National de France live 1964 [[ASIN:B00008EZZ1 Honegger: Symphony 2 & 5; Le Chant de Nigamon; Pastorale d'ete]]

- Mravinsky Liturgique 1965 [[ASIN:B000001HCC Yevgeny Mravinsky conducts Paul Hindemith & Arthur Honegger (Mravinsky Edition, Volume 6) (Melodiya)]]

- Symphonies No. 2 & 3 by Karajan, 1969 [[ASIN:B00000E3YY Honegger: Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique", Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra and Trumpet]]

- Symphonies No. 1 & 5 by Rozhdestvensky, 1985 [[ASIN:B0015RAJ3U Honegger: Symphonies 1 & 5; Gennadi Rozhdestvensky]]

- Symphonies 3 & 5, Pacific 231 by Järvi, 1992, [[ASIN:B000000AS2 Honegger: Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 3; Pacific 231]]

- Symphonies No. 2 & 3, Pacific 231 by Jansons, 1993 [[ASIN:B00000DNTD Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3, Liturgique, Pacific 231]]


title: A "Liturgique" with a major difference

text:
This is the reissue from 2002, Denon "Crest 1000" COCO-70245, of a recording whose previous release from 1996 on CO-78831 sells much cheaper at the time of writing, [[ASIN:B0000034W8 Honegger: Pacific 231 / Rugby]]. You won't find the original edition from 1995 on COCO-78831 unless you are Japanese, because its credits are in Japanese only: [[ASIN:B00005EOZV オネゲル:パシフィック231/交響曲第3番]]. There is also a Blue-Spec-CD edition from 2012, Denon COCO-73290, [[ASIN:B007JLLSYA Pacific 231/Symphonie Liturgique. Etc.]].

In capsule: Jean Fournet isn’t a conductor much associated with Honegger, and in fact I’m not aware of any Honegger recording of his other than this Denon CD, recorded in 1993, with Rugby, Pacific 231, Concerto da Camera, Pastorale d’été and Symphony Liturgique. Also, you wouldn’t expect an 80-year old conductor to have the energy and drive to fully convey the tension, bite, motoric energy and even rage of the two “Mouvements symphoniques” and the Symphony. To an extent, this is verified: Fournet’s Rugby is the most sluggish committed to disc, rugby players mired in mud. His Pacific is much better, although it lacks momentum. Not surprisingly, the two more gentle pieces, Pastorale and Concerto da Camera, fare well and are very atmospheric.

But it’s Fournet’s Liturgique that comes as a great surprise: while the first two movements seem modelled after Karajan’s recording and are not wanting in bite and tension, the Finale is truly something else: where the slowest versions, like Karajan’s, took that grim march at the very deliberate tempo prescribed in the score (many taking it significantly faster – including the composer -, to great effect, and no one I’ve heard taking it faster than Mariss Jansons), Fournet takes it almost 20 beats SLOWER (almost half the speed of Jansons). Subjective reaction and judgment will differ: I find it great, and if only for its radicalism this is a version that every serious Honeggerite should know.

This is the summary, from February 11, 2018, of a review that was originally much longer and way more elaborate, detailed and substantiated in its interpretive comparisons, and provided many links to other versions. To know more about it, see My Profile.


title: 214.50 ???? They're crazy !

text:
On May 7, 2013, this Mobile Fidelity CD was sold on eBay for 214.50. And it's not like there was one insane buyer ready to put that money on a CD: second bidder went up to 212, so that's two insane music lovers in the world, and third bidder still went up to 77, fourth to 50.50.

And what's truly insane about this (although I think that spending 214 on a CD is in itself insane) is that this recording, and others from Mobile Fidelity, were reissued by Vox, [[ASIN:B00008G011 Glinka: String Quartet #2; Myaskovsky: String Quartet #13; Taneyev: Trio #2]], and at the time of writing it sells for... 2.13!!! ONE HUNDRED TIMES CHEAPER. I haven't checked on this specific recording, but I did on others from the series: they are exactly the same transfers !!! (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000DWQ9 Emil Gilels: Robert Schumann Nachtstucke, Op. 23, Nos. 1-4 / Moments Musicaux, Op. 94, Nos. 1-6]]).

I'm not going to make here any comment on the compositions or interpretations (I'll reserve that to my review of the Vox issue), because obviously people who are ready to spend 2.14 on the music and 210 on... what? the packaging??? wouldn't be interested in comments on the music. I'm not even laughing, I'm scratching my head about the rationality of some buyers.


title: Maybe Tansman was never recognized as a "great composer" because he burgeoned late

text:
Polish-French composer Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) is one of those 20th-century "petit maîtres", or minor masters, who wrote in a modern but not avant-garde style and always remained overshadowed by the era's great towering masters, Stravinsky, Bartok, the composers of the New Vienna School to name a few, and even by secondary figures who received more recognition than he did, maybe just by dint of having been there before, like Honegger, Martinu, Hindemith or even Milhaud. Or maybe Tansman simply lived too old and late, still writing music that wasn't avant-garde enough in times dominated by Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono and all their followers.

But, judging from the number of CDs of his music now available, there's something of a reappraisal process going on - or maybe this is just a phenomenon of the CD, that affords ghostly existence to anyone and everyone, and one can wager without much risk that, while he may acquire some recorded existence, Tansman will never gain much foothold in the concert life.

As well-inclined as I am to welcome and sing the praise of a minor figure who may not have been avant-garde but wasn't a neo-romantic reactionary either, I haven't been entirely convinced by Tansman's 5th Symphony. I don't find the language always very distinctive. In fact, to my surprise, had I heard the first movement blind and been asked "who wrote this symphony in 1942?", I think I would have responded Milhaud. I've been listening to the music of Milhaud lately, including compositions not often heard like his Symphonies, There is a lot in the melodic twists in Tansman's first movement that I would have attributed to Milhaud (in HIS more dramatic and sombre mood), mixed with a more romantically-oriented style that seems to point to the American symphonists of the 1940s - Tansman was established in Hollywood then. The middle movement unfolds first in a pastoral and romantic mood and lingers on not very much, but it does develop to an intense climax. The Scherzo is dynamic and sardonically boisterous, with echoes of Jazz and Stravinksy (Tansman had become great friends in Hollywood, and he wrote a study on Stravinsky in 1946). The Finale has impressive moments, starting with imposing, stark brass chords that could be Copland at HIS most modernist, alongside a fugal passage that begins in a not too distinctive manner (at 3:29), recalling Milhaud again, but it too develops to great intensity.

But then, with the two later compositions, Stèle In Memoriam Stravinsky (1972) and Four Movements (1968), I immediately hear a distinctive voice, a great sonic imagination and ability to conjure fascinating atmospheres (with beautiful use of soft percussion instruments, celesta, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, and Tansman likes to write hushed, shimmering string trills and flutter-tonguing flutes, to great atmospheric effect), and a gripping sense of drama. In the second movement of Stèle, "Studio ritmico" or "rhythmic study", which acts as a quasi-scherzo framed by two slower and quieter movements ("Elegy" and "Lamento"), the music is aggressive, motoric, high-voltage. The urgent and agitated second of the Four Movements, "Perpetuum mobile" (counting the Interlude between the second and third movements the composition comprises five in fact) conjures an eerie, ghostly atmosphere as in a nightmarish etching of Goya, and the mysterious nocturnal mood continues in the Interlude with the flutter-tonguing flute, upward violin glissandi and soft xylophone drops interrupted by stark, enigmatic chords of brass and percussion. The Elegy develops to harrowing intensity, and at the beginning of the Finale the rhythmic syncopations with flutes, percussion, horns and piano pounding suggest Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, but the movement again develops to forbidding intensity, before ending on the soft, shimmering trills of strings and flutes of the beginning.

Maybe Tansman was never recognized as a great composer because he burgeoned late. I need to explore more of his music to confirm.

I happen to have the study score of Stèle - found it very cheap some years ago - and the other recording, by Howard Griffiths on Cpo ([[ASIN:B007HOEZKS Works for Piano & Orchestra]]). There's more impact in the tutti with Cpo but more clarity of details on Marco Polo, although I don't always hear the soft percussion instruments as clearly as I'd like to. However, neither Cpo nor Marco Polo do much in clarifying the details of the very dense orchestration of the middle movement, "Studio ritmico". The violins of Minsky's Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic don's always sound entirely together in the upper reaches, which you might ascribe to "contemporary" music but seems rather to lie on less-than-perfect intonation. Interpretively, Griffiths' more animated pacing throughout seems preferable, especially in the first movement, "Elegia", which Minsky makes too languid to be really true to the spirit of Stravinsky. But the brass and woodwind interjections in "Studio ritmico" nicely sound like the barks of the Baskerville hound.


title: Composers, if you want to be recognized for what you are worth - DON'T EMIGRATE TO BRAZIL!

text:
I'm sure Brazil is a great country, much more fun to live than Switzerland. But look, Ernst Widmer, born in 1927 and trained at the Zürich Conservatory, established in Brazil in 1956 to escape the stultifying atmosphere of Switzerland, and acquired Brazilian citizenship in 1967. I'm sure he gained a great life (he died in 1990), and by the early 1970s he seems to have been a recognized composer there (when the Ministry of Education and Culture published its very first LP devoted to Brazilian contemporary music, a piece of Widmer was among the three selected), but who outside of Brazil, and maybe a few now in Switzerland, has heard of Widmer? Yet, based on the pieces collated here, he was a great composer.

It was pure chance that I discovered the existence and music of Widmer. His narration with piano trio, "The Last Flower", provided the pairing of a Vanguard CD which I had bought for its companion, the trio of Mauricio Kagel ([[ASIN:B00002513J Kagel: Piano Trio / Widmer: The Last Flower Op. 60]]). Turns out that Widmer's was an extraordinary work, not just an instrumental trio with narrator, but music made theatre, based on the 1939 children's comic book of satirist James Thurber (1894-1961) of Newyorker fame. An exceptionally interesting work, and I don't doubt that the day a band of musicians with exploratory minds pick it up and bring it to every school and stage in the country, it'll be immensely successful.

So I had to explore more Widmer, and here it is. It confirms, and even more, my impression of "The Last Flower": this is a major, unknown 20th Century composer.

Fans of Robert Simpson, listen to his 1984 Symphony in One Movement!!!! The accumulation and explosion of telluric forces, the epic crescendos, the motoric energy: this is pure Simpson, but with Widmer it is interlaced with the avant-garde techniques and tone-painting of the Polish School. A great, powerful 20th Century Symphony.

Listening only to the first notes of Caititi-Lua Nova for soprano, flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola, cello, double-bass and percussion (1978), I am again struck by the originality of Widmer's voice. The grainy timbre of long sustained notes by cello, double-bass and husky viola with soft brushes of cymbal, string harmonics, less singing a melody than chanting a mysterious ritual. The music is mysterious, intriguing, catching, truly original. The text is based on an East Brazilian Indian poem, first spoken in French (probably because the performance recorded here under the composer's direction was given in French-speaking Geneva), then sung in an unrecognizable language and onto an accompaniment become more jagged and dance-like. Soprano Sonja Stenhammar is obviously non-French speaking, but she has a fine singing voice.

In the same ritualistic and contemporary dance-like vein is Pulsars (1969) for chamber ensemble interspersed with human sighs, whose trumpet outbursts bring to mind pieces such as Varèse's Hyperprism, and some of its hectic solos for violin, Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale.

And that is nothing compared to the companion piece, "Quasars" (1970), that is not on this CD, but was the one on the Brazilian LP I referred to above, and which can be heard on YouTube: a composition for large orchestra and electronics, a quarter of an hour of orchestral tone painting in the manner of Ligeti's Atmospheres, but with the power and violence of Penderecki's Threnos to the Victims of Hiroshima, music that Kubrick could have used for "2001, A Space Odyssey", had he been cognizant of the Brazilian contemporary music scene. Composers, if you want to be recognized for what you are worth, DON'T EMIGRATE TO BRAZIL!!! (consider only spending your vacation there...).

Widmer's passing in 1990 seems to have signaled the beginning of a discovery. Already in his lifetime an Ernst Widmer Society was set up in his birth-town of Aarau Switzerland,  that became the inheritor of Widmer's estate and copyrights, and in 1999 it established a partial catalog of his works (most in manuscript form) that can still be accessed online. In 1991 the Swiss label Grammont published this CD (it was later reissued on the label Musikszene Schweiz / Musiques Suisses, which is how it is listed on the European sister companies, ASIN B000028BX0). Sadly though, the discovery seems to have run out of steam and stifled before it could gain any momentum. The Society's website itself can't be accessed anymore (its weblink leads to a blank page), and e-mails sent to them return undelivered, "no mailbox here by that name".

Well, Widmer has one new great fan. Now the word needs to be spread. First, go to YouTube and search Widmer.


title: An interesting pairing, and Widmer's "Trio" (but it's much more than that) an extraordinary discovery

text:
An interesting pairing, and I can say it no better than the liner notes, so forgive me if I liberally quote, with a few additions of my own in brackets:

"This production joins together two pieces which in a fascinating manner both contradict and complete each other. Two composers of the same generation, the first [Mauricio Kagel] born [in 1931 - he was still alive when the recording was made in the mid-1990s, he died in 2008] and raised in South America [Argentina] and residing in Europe [Germany] since 1957, is one of the most celebrated composers of our century. The other [Ernst Widmer, 1927-1990], who grew up in Europe [Switzerland] and left to live in South America [Brazil] in 1956, has always remained among the most unknown, intriguing composers of our time. They have an entirely different approach to the concept of musical drama on which their trio compositions are based. The compositions themselves are almost two decades apart [Widmer's from 1968 and Kagel's from 1984/5], and their conflict with the mainstream idiom of their time is undeniable and should not be explained only in terms of coincidences in destiny and biography. It may be worthwhile to look at these two compositions as a pair, since they are not only entirely different in their purpose and means, yet also touch at more than one angle..."

Kagel's Trio was written in 1984/5 and is based on his "musical epic" "La Trahison Orale" ("The Verbal Betrayal" - rather than the liner notes' "Treachery"): a pun on the words "la tradition orale" / "oral tradition", and as the liner notes here aptly put it, "much more than a mere witticism - it is an annoying yet liberating truth daily experienced by every thinking musician that tradition is an ongoing and everchanging process of betraying its sources". "La Trahison Orale" is, in the composer's own words, a "poetic and musical record of the imprint left by the myth of the devil in the French psyche", based on a book by French author and sociologist Claude Seignolle's on French folklore about the devil. Quoted, Kagel says that "instead of specifying with what instruments "Trahison Orale" should be played, I thought a piano score would be the most suitable form to put my intentions into action" and speaks of "the superiority of musical substance over a specific tone color". And he adds: "what I had in mind from the beginning was paraphrasing my musical epos into a classical combination of violin, violoncello and piano". If I understand, the trio doesn't follow exactly the musical order of the "epic", but rearranges its themes in the classical three movements, the second serving as the explosive "Scherzo" framed by two, overall, slower ones. The booklet provides a short summary of the various episodes of the "play" from which the music is drawn, but given that Kagel sought to compose "anti-descriptive" music often contradicting the action rather than sheepishly illustrating it, listening to the trio doesn't require any referring to it.

Of Kagel I would have expected more avant-gardism and prankish provocativeness- and I don't mean this as a disparagement, just an observation. Despite a few occasional flights into more contemporary compositional and performing techniques and atmospheres, his trio often sounds like modernized Shostakovich, or Shostakovich under the influence of his radical pupil Ustvolskaya (who was in fact quite avant-garde and provocative in her own and unique way), which I am sure will be viewed as much more of an incentive by many potential listeners than if it had been truly avant-gardist, and as a deterrent by far fewer. Kagel's Trio is a pleasant work, not particularly ground-breaking or revelatory.

But the real discovery of this disc is the - well, calling it "trio" would belittle and betray its nature and impact - "narration in music" of Ernst Widmer.

There's one more link between the respective composition of Kagel and Widmer that the liner notes fail to insist upon: while Kagel's is the musical "accompaniment", or commentary on an implicit narration, Widmer's "The Last Flower" is an explicit "melodrama", e.g. spoken narration with musical accompaniment. The choice of text provides the first originality of Widmer's composition: word for word, it is the same-titled illustrated children book by The Newyorker's satirist and cartoonist James Thurber. You don't usually hear anti-militarist science-fiction set to music (Blomdahl's Aniara and Ligeti's Grand Macabre come to mind): "World War 12, as everybody knows, brought about the collapse of civilization". And to think that this was written in 1939. I hope it wasn't prescience. Thurber dedicated his book to "Rosemary, in the wistful hope that her world will be better than mine". So far it has been (if she elected to live in the United States). Hope it remains the same for HER offsprings.

Although the liner notes also provide a short and not very telling synopsis in the form of the titles of the various episodes, the best way to listen to the music, I've found, is by following simultaneously with Thurber's book - which, bless the inventors of the Internet, is available online, three dabya dot ommas-aarden.net slash Last_Flower_page1 dot htm.

The music is quite elaborate, going from shapeless sounds (tremolos of violin and cello, piano pounding repetitive chords) to depict the planet destroyed, to a complex canon set off by the words "Song came back into the world", and back to shapelessness. But really, Widmer adapts his styles to the needs of the narration, the sardonic and banging military marches hark back to Austro-German expressionism of the 1920s (Hindemith, Krenek and many others wrote such anti-miltarist marches), some of the writing reminded me of the Violin-Piano Sonatas of Ives. And even when he shuns melody and uses very contemporary techniques of sound production (for instance at 25:45, "The liberators, under the guidance of God, set fire to the discontent" and 26:30 "So presently the world was at war again", with even harping on the the piano strings to make them sound metallic like a harpsichord fallen out the window"), they don't sound "contemporary" because they are entirely at the service of the dramatic narration. Narrator David Cameron is excellent. I suppose that he is the Australian actor (and not the British prime minister!), but his accent sounds genuinely American (without being too pronounced either).

This is not only a very original work, it is also immensely entertaining and really, it deserves to be discovered, widely known and played in every school in the United States (with the images of Thurber projected on a screen). I'm in no doubt that it would be immensely successful.

More music of Widmer was once available here, [[ASIN:B007XWGPL6 Ernst Widmer: Main Works]] (see my review), and now on YouTube: this is a great, unknown 20th Century composer! Composers, if you want to be recognized for your worth, DON'T EMIGRATE TO BRAZIL!!!!! (just spend your vacation there...). It is for Kagel that I bought this disc, and I posthumously thank him for being the agent of this great discovery.

TT 59 minutes. This is a production of Dutch-Vanguard Classics, copyrighted 1996. Absurdly, the booklet gives the day of recordings - 6-7 July for Widmer and 28-29 for Kagel - but not the year, so it could have been 1995 as much as 1996. For those interested in the American Vanguard Classics label and curious to know what is Dutch Vanguard vs. the original American Vanguard, see my review of [[ASIN:B00535G65U Henning Mankell Piano Works]].

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title: Enigmatic and fascinating, a two-hour long quasi-improvisation for organ

text:
Strange set, strange music.

First, the production itself. It is a set published by Zyx Music and the label is called "Russian Art". The front cover only indicates "Shchedrin - paintings by Leonid Vaichlia" and you need to go to the back cover to see that it has "A Musical Offering". The composition's opus number in Shchedrin's catalog you will find nowhere on the disc.

In fact, the scanty liner notes are as good as silent about the composition. When and on what occasion it was composed, what exactly it is, what relation it bears to Bach's Musical Offering (the notes make only a reference to the Well-Tempered Keyboard) and what relation it bears to the (very banal, I find) oil-paitings of traditional Russian city-scapes under the snow (three are reproduced on the digipack's  folders) by contemporary Russian painter Leonid Vaichlia, we are not told. But the painter's resume is even given in the booklet - he was born in 1922 and apparently has never heard of Picasso, Kandinsky and the likes -, and even the contact info to the gallery in Torino, Italy that promotes his paintings. But the only info we have about the production is a Melodiya copyright from 1987, and one for the company, Zyx music, from 1998.

Anyway, for all its mystery, and even because of it, the music elicits a genuine fascination.

Basically, it is a 2-hour long composition for solo organ, that seems very improvisatory in outlook. The mood is mystical (post Jehan Alain or Marcel Dupré, sort of, although the language is more contemporary than that), slow moving, brooding, at times rising to tremendous climaxes, like some secret and certainly not very orthodox ritual.

But then there is more. At 17:55 into CD 1 track 2, after a more brooding and suspended passage, three flutes enter, quickly putting the organ to silence. Their music is again very mysterious, slow-moving, atmospheric, a few tones (and maybe quarter-tones) apart. Composers like Feldman or Radulescu come to mind. At 21:24 the flute music becomes more playful and dance-like (with an undercurrent of rage, perhaps). Quite fascinating, and part of the fascination derives from the same-timbre of the instruments.

And it goes on: the flutes return to their introductory, meditative mood, and after a brief upward flurry, the organ returns at 4:57 in track 3 (that's after nearly 10 minutes of fluting), meditative, slow-moving, church-like, and remains on its own for seven minutes (a little too long of not much happening). Suddenly, at 12:15, it is interrupted by the dramatic and intimidating buzzing of, now, three bassoons. They go through a variety of moods, ultimately receding (at the beginning of CD2 track 1) to the same meditative mood as the rest, giving way to a return of the organ (1:30) alternating Bach/Church imitations and anguished sequences in a more contemporary language. The music grows to a climax, interrupted at 7:49 now by three trombonnes erupting in a mighty and forbidding fanfare, soon followed by pointillistic belches reminiscent of the honks that open Ligeti's Grand Macabre. After various developments, organ returns, menacingly, at 11:28. These various intrumental groups keep on returning, dreamily, playfully, menacingly, but do not mix until CD 2 track 2. The music is alternately slow-moving and pensive and powerful and forbidding (especially the organ whirlwinds with imposing trombone blasts at the end of track 2 CD 2).

Running two hours the composition is easily 20 minutes too long. Nonetheless, it is enigmatic and fascinating.

And a post-script: a search on the net yielded that A Musical Offering, Shchedrin's opus 65, was composed in 1983 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth and first performed in Moscow that same year by Shchedrin and the same performers as on this recording, save one flutist. The piece was released on a Melodiya LP (A10 00365) with entirely different performers - apparently a lithuanian ensemble, in a performance recorded at the Riga Dom Concert Hall in 1987, which seems to belie Zyx's 1987 Melodiya copyright indication given for the present recording. Unless someone, Melodiya originally or Zyx now, has misattributed the performance? The mystery only deepens...


title: immersed into Honegger's orchestra - and nearer to the back

text:
In capsule: the pairing of Honegger’s first and last Symphony is an excellent idea, not otherwise encountered on disc, with the 5th recapturing something of the grimness and aggressiveness of the First (and it is probably coincidental, but very appropriate, that the 5th ends with the same character indication, “Allegro marcato”, as the First begins). Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, recorded in 1985 and 1986, offers VERY idiosyncratic readings of both works, marked by VERY slow tempos, which may rob the first movement of Symphony No. 1 of some of its bite and fury, but the conductor makes up for the sluggishness of his pacing thanks to the remarkable bite of all his players and especially brass and woodwinds, abetted by the extraordinary sonics which place you right in the middle of the orchestra – and nearer to the back and brass. Not a first choice because too far out and personal, but, for the very same reason, a CD hat no serious Honeggerite should be without.

This is the short summary, from February 14, 2018, of a review that was originally much longer and way more substantiated in its interpretive comparisons, providing many links to other versions. To know more about, why it's gone from here and where it is, see My Profile.


title: flawed sonics in Romanza, but invaluable recordings nonetheless

text:
The exceptional value of this recording compels the music lover to disregard, in Alexander Goehr's Romanza, the annoyance of the constant static that mars the sonic quality of what is visibly an air-check off the radio, that otherwise comes in sound that is clear and vivid enough. Goehr composed his Romanza for and dedicated it to Jacqueline du Pré, who premiered it with her recently-wed husband Daniel Barenboim at the Brighton Festival, in April 1968. Here the product info claims that the performance was given in October 1968 at the royal Festival Hall in London, and I have no way to check.

"Romanza": the title is deceptive if that it lets you expect a short, minor, romantic work. It is 25 minutes long and Romanza is an important and magnificent, fully-fledged Cello Concerto, displaying all the hallmarks of Goehr's compositional style: mostly brooding and lyrical in Goehr's own, atonal way - but maybe even more lyrical and melodious than usually with Goehr, thanks perhaps to the instrument and the performer for whom it was meant, although I just heard Goehr's Violin Concerto from 1962 and it is also very lyrical, see my review of [[ASIN:B00061S0BE British Composers: Hamilton, Goehr]] - with some passages of great mystery and sensuousness,  interrupted by explosive outbursts to the point of brutality, freely rapsodic but with a sense of logical unfolding that one perceives even if one doesn't analyze it, certainly not "easy-listening" but full of wonderful touches of compositional imagination. The repertoire is unique for du Pré (other than Priaulx Rainier's Cello Concert, which she performed once and hated, I'm not aware that she played and even less recorded any other piece of contemporary music). This should be a must for any du Pré admirer - even if they admire her more for Elgar and Brahms than for hear feats in contemporary music.

The Symphony dates from two years later and we get here the premiere performance from May 1970 by Edward Downes conducting the same New Philharmonia at the same Royal Festival Hall, London, in fine sound (more about that anon). There is nothing "lyrical" or "melodious" here; as in the Romanza, there are moments of broodingness - the beginning strikingly features a cello solo cantilena after a short orchestral intro, and if you are not listening attentively you might think you are in the Romanza's next movement - but you soon realize that this is only the pent-up, menacing vortex of energy that will rise in the course of the symphony's half-hour, pile up, erupt and lead to a climax (around 24:30) of brutal violence, for which I can see only Varèse's Amériques as a forerunner. The composition is definitely not for all ears, but it is impressive, awesome, and quite unique.

These two works have been granted studio recordings ([[ASIN:B00000E97J Metamorphosis / Dance / Romanza for Cello & Orchestra]] and [[ASIN:B00000DD75 Piano Cto Op 33 / Symphony in One Movement Op 29]]); given the sonic problems of Romanza, the Unicorn disc must be given preference. On the other hand, it is the live Intaglio recording that has, and by a wide margin, the most vivid sound, presence and impact over its competitor; in fact, the sonics of the NMC disc are so dulled (and the interpretation as well) that you could easily miss that the Symphony is the powerful masterpiece that it is. So the Intaglio disc remains indispensable, as a document for Romanza and as a first choice for the Symphony. I am usually not too well disposed towards the kind of bootleg label as Intagl'io, but hey, who else has brought these invaluable recordings to the public? So: thank you.


title: Not easy-listening, but challenging and ultimately rewarding

text:
Alexander Goehr's Violin Concerto is a very interesting composition, not easy listening but highly rewarding. The liner notes claim that its first movement is not serial/twelve tone, but it certainly sounds that way. In fact the (relatively short) movement is based on an unfinished series which finds its completion only in the next (twice as extended) movement. The Concerto sounds somewhat like the 2nd Concerto Schoenberg might have written, a quarter-century after his first. Like Schoenberg, it can be very lyrical, but it is a stern, atonal lyricism, not one that is romantic and heart-on-sleeve. In typical Schoenberg fashion, there is gossamer interplay between the soloist and the orchestra, the orchestral writing sounds always contrapuntal rather than chordal, and the powerful orchestral outbursts seem to proceed in spurts. The Concerto is packed with musical events, very dramatic in a rather enigmatic way (there are impressive climaxes but they don't sound like they happen through a simple and predictable linear unfolding) and quite deft and subtle in construction, although that may not strike the casual listener. I've heard recently a number of Concertos from those years (late 1950s to mid-1970s) that, however enjoyable they may have been, sounded much more anonymous in their predictable musical dramaturgy, expression and style (see my reviews of [[ASIN:B000001K5F American Concertos]] on Vox, and of [[ASIN:B000000TN6 Rawsthorne: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2; Improvisations on a Theme of Constant Lambert; Divertimento]]). Hearing Goehr's "Schoenberg VC# 2" came as a refreshing and rewarding change, although I recognize (and warn the reader) that this is probably for the cognoscenti, those who can hear "tunes" in the music of Schoenberg.

Iain Hamilton's Violin Concerto from 1952 is also a very enjoyable work, very lyrical in an anguished manner, tormented and dramatic, dynamic and uplifting in the finale (but still in a rather grim way), although it is written in a more anonymous, modernist but not avant-guarde language similar to the concertos mentioned above - but still quite daring in post-war UK, dominated by the brahmsian and pastoral influences of Elgar and Vaughan Williams (Vaughan Williams wasn't uniformly pastoral, of course). Manoug Parikian acquits himself stupendously well of these two difficult and virtuosic (both digitally and musically) works. Great 1971 sonics.

Before this disc I had never heard the name of Iain Hamilton, let alone his music (his representation on disc is very scarce). My loss. The Violin Concerto is more or less where he started, which is not bad, but then he discovered the music of Webern (again, not common in the UK in the 1950s) and moved on. Sinfonia for two orchestras from 1959 is a post-Webern, serial work, and like Goehr's Concerto, it is not an easy work, not "pretty" or "seductive" or "songful", but it is finely whrought with a very elaborate, arch-like architecture, packed with instrumental events and undergoing moods that are alternately impressive and delicate. The recording is from 1966 and it is fine, despite a one-second drop-out that, reading from the Gramophone review (August 1966), was part of the original LP. Alexander Gibson and the Scottish National Orchestra had given the premiere seven years before, so they are the ideal interpreters. On the original LP the Sinfonia was paired with Orr's Symphony and Thea Musgrave's Triptych for tenor and orchestra; EMI has already reissued the former on a similar instalment of its great "British composers" series, paired with a fabulous reading of Simpson's First Symphony by Adrian Boult, [[ASIN:B00006YX78 Fricker, Orr, Simpson: Symphonies]], so I hope they will eventually bring back the lattter as well.

The liner notes are reproduced from the original LPs and they are outstanding. TT 68 minutes.


title: Sinfonia Concertante is the masterpiece here

text:
Now that I've heard all of Andrzej Panufnik's symphonies except #7 (for some reason the recording conducted by the composer, on Unicorn, never made it onto CD) and #10, I am tempted to conclude that, as good wine, Panufnik got better as he aged. Symphony #2 ("Elegiaca") from 1957 ([[ASIN:B0000CBL9H Panufnik - Nocturne; Rhapsody; Sinfonia Elegiaca]]) I found somewhat clichéd and bombastic, derivative of Shostakovich and trying a little too hard to sound, as its title implies, elegiac. Symphony #3 (Sacra) from 1963 is, if the number of recordings is to serve as a pointer, Panufnik's most popular work: I first discovered it through another (and later) composer-conducted recording, this time with the glorious Amsterdam Concertgebouw, on Elektra/Nonesuch (see my review of [[ASIN:B000005IZY Panufnik: Sinfonia sacra/Arbor cosmica]]). This website also lists three recent recordings by Gerard Schwarz ([[ASIN:B000006HN1 Andrzej Panufnik: Symphony No. 10 (World Premiere Recording) / Autumn Music / Heroic Overture / Sinfonia Sacra - Seattle Symphony]]), John Storgards ([[ASIN:B000U6YJZ6 Panufnik: Heroic Overture; Sinfonia de Sfere; Landscape; Sinfonia Sacra [Hybrid SACD]]]) and Lukasz Borowicz ([[ASIN:B005LVDMPI Panufnik: Symphonic Works 4 (Symphonies 2,3 & 10)]]). Yet, though I find it ultimately quite effective and winning, I do think its architecture is somewhat simplistic and its musical resources rather unsubtle, going a little too much for immediate effect not to elicit some resistance.

But the symphonies composed from the mid-1970s onwards (# 5 "di Sfere" in 1975, 6 "Mistica" in 1977, 8 "Votiva" in 1981 and 9 "della Speranza" in 1986, see [[ASIN:B000EQHVB6 Panufnik - Sinfonia Mistica; Sinfonia di Sfere]], [[ASIN:B0000666BF Panufnik & Sessions: Symphony No. 8 & Concerto]] and [[ASIN:B0000024CI Panufnik: Symphony No9, Concerto for piano]]) I find superb works, modern in language but not aggressively so, organising a highly effective architecture of tension and repose and resulting in great dramatic impact. The two Symphonies contained on this CD other than Sinfonia Sacra further confirm my impression, in both ways.

Despite some nice orchestral touches (like the string glissandos in the slow movement), some of them resulting from the antiphonal placement of the strings (two quintets surrounded the woodwind and brass section, and the recording highlights them very well), the folk-inspired Sinfonia Rustica, Panufnik's First (1948, revised 1955) sounds not so much like one of those many works composed in imitation of Bartok in the late 1940s and early 1950s (and here it would be the most accessible, folk-inspired Bartok of the Hungarian Dances), as one written in imitation of Kodaly, strikingly so. Not that it is a bad specimen in that not so frequent genre, but still, it sounds very derivative.

But Sinfonia Concertante for flute, harp and strings, Panufnik's 4th, which dates from 1973, is something else. It is terse, enigmatic, gentle, meditative, its textures are chamber-like, starting with a beautifully mysterious duet of the two solo instruments. It displays genuine imagination and, in its apparently unassuming character, it is highly original and quite daring.

Sinfonia Sacra and Sinfonia Rustica were originally recorded by EMI in 1966 and published together (HMV ASD 2298), and later licensed by Unicorn. This is why the same recordings can be found, but separately, on two Unicorn CD reissues, completed with shorter Panufnik pieces : [[ASIN:B000001PBF Tragic Overture / Autumn Music / Heroic Overture]] and [[ASIN:B00000E97M Panufnik - Sinfonia Sacra / Concerto Festivo / Concertino / Landscape]]. I prefer to have them back together, even if it entails the loss of the shorter pieces which complete the Unicorn CDs. As expected, in Sinfonia Sacra the Monte Carlo Orchestra sounds more rough and untidy than the Concertgebouw, and the composer's later recording on Elektra/Nonesuch remains a better choice, all the more so as it contains the magnificent "Arbor Cosmica" for 12 strings (1983), one of Panufnik's masterpieces and arguably one of the great masterpieces of 20th Century music for string ensemble. But for Sinfonia Concertante alone this new reissue is worth buying, and the duplication of Sinfonia Sacra no big obstacle. Sinfonia Concertante was recorded in 1975 and first released on LP as EMI EMD 552, paired with the composer's Violin Concerto performed by Menuhin (earlier reissued on another EMI "British Composers" disc, paired with Concertos of Berkeley and Williamson, but now sadly difficult to find (I'm now out of authorized product links, but it is listed here under ASIN B000025QYX).

Liner notes are pretty scanty. The dates of composition aren't even given, I had to go on Panufnik's website to retrieve them.


title: A Wagner medley for horns - convincing and entertaining

text:
Once I had the good fortune to be able to attend some rehearsals in Bayreuth. Their "Sitzprobe" (when the singers rehearse for the first time with the orchestra, with no staging, just "seated", to get the synchronization right) take place... in the Festival's restaurant. There, the singers in fact stand on the balcony, and the orchestra is seated on the floor.

And, I tell you, standing on the balcony, it's like standing in the mouth of the erupting volcano, the orchestra is overwhelming, and the brass blast like mad. Two conclusions: one, no wonder Wagner had the orchestra covered, quasi burried in the pit. Two, unless you've stood on that balcony, you haven't heard Wagner's orchestra, not really.

I bring up those personal recollections to say how congenial and true to the sound of Wagner these arrangements for 8 horns are. The Bayreuther Festspiel-Hornisten are the 8 hornists of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra (itself gathers musicians from a number of German orchestras) and they recorded a few discs in the mid- to late 1980s for Acanta. This one offers paraphrases, or pot-pourris, or medleys from four operas: Lohengrin, Rheingold, Siegfried and Tristan. I love it. You might think that reducing the full sound of Wagner's orchestra to horns would diminish it or betray its true colors: I don't find so, because Wagner's orchestration is so dependent on brass in the first place. No, you really get your run-through, or crash-course in Wagner, and, with a TT of 64:35, this is as generous and enjoyable as any collection of the "Ring Without Words" or "Wagner for Orchestra" type.

The CD has been reissued on [[ASIN:B0085TPLT8 Fantasies for 8 Horns]], where at the time of writing it sells cheaper (it's also available on download, [[ASIN:B00A4A3PTE Richard Wagner: Fantasien für 8 Hörner - Fantasies for 8 Horns]]. Good to see that Acanta is keeping their catalog alive.


title: Eric Heidsieck's Goldberg, Diabelli, Haendel and al. Variations on the Marseillaise - brilliant!

text:
This is one of the most fun, brilliant, clever, entertaining discs published on the occasion of the celebrations of the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989. Therein, pianist and, for the occasion, composer Eric Heidsieck offers a series of variations on the theme of the Marseillaise, which is already fun and clever. But there's a plus, in that the theme and each variation are written "in the style of", and given in an order that's not so much chronological as stylistic, 18th-Century and the Romantics, 20th-Century. And it is brilliantly and imaginatively done, Heidsieck shows a consumate knowledge and understanding of each composer's respective manner and makes it easy to think that each of them would have composed his own variation on the given theme, exactly like Beethoven and 50 others when Diabelli provided his own (which, of course, in the case of Bach, Haendel and Mozart, is historically impossible, since Rouget de Lisle wrote the Marseillaise - known then as the War Song for the Army of the Rhine - in 1792. On the other hand, Liszt DID actually write a great Paraphrase on the Marseillaise, and Schumann fugivitely quotes it in the first movement of Faschingsschwank aus Wien, and so does Debussy at the end of Feux d'artifice, the last of his second book of Preludes). And really, Heidsieck's "in the style of" compositions are not just "competent", each time he shows twists of imagination that take you in an unexpected direction, but one that is exactly where you can fancy the respective composer would have brought you. The one drawback of the disc is that it provides only two cue-points (as the Goldberg Variations, Heidsieck's are divided in two parts), so here's the complete listing with timings, and with the titles and tempo indications, they are part of the fun:

1. Introduction and theme alla Beethoven (allegro con brio in B minor)
(2:07) alla Mozart (allegro con spirito)
(3:08) alla Bach (Bourrée for left-hand - moderato)
(5:26) alla Haendel (Maestoso - pomposo - più vivace)
(8:42) alla pre-romantic (Prelude in G minor - andantino)
(10:50) alla Schumann ("vif - lent - vif" says the CD, but really it should have been "lebhaft, langsam, lebhaft")
(12:53) alla Schubert (Impromptu in B-flat minor - cantabile)
(15:12) alla Chopin (Nocturne in B-flat major)
(18:47) alla Liszt (Légence héroïque from E-flat major to E major)
(22:13) alla Mendelssohn (Capriccio vivacissimamente from E to A minor)
(23:47) alla Brahms (Ballade in B major)
(27:12) alla Weber (Allegro non troppo ma con fuco in D-flat major)

2. alla Rachmaninoff (Etude in B minor "Flamethrower")
(3:18) alla Grieg (Lullaby in A minor "For the Surviving Child")
(6:42) alla Fauré (Pavane in B minor - noble and sad)
(9:46) alla Debussy ("En rouge garance et rouge sang" - "In Rose Madder and Blood-Red")
(13:28) alla Couperin/Ravel (Leçon des Ténèbres in B minor / La vallée d'Albolescar"
(19:52) alla Stravinsky (Chorale in B-flat - Taps)
(22:36) alla Prokofiev (The Fugitive's Vision in B-flat)
(26:42) alla contemporary music (Piece in the Shape of a Guillotine [after Satie's Morceaux en forme de poire]
(29:00) Variation and Theme from the Dies Irae (danse macabre in B-flat minor - requiescant in pace in b-flat minor - coda in B major).

I don't know if Heidsieck meant his "contemporary music" variation to be a spoof, and he probably did, but it sounds great, integral with harping directly on the strings "alla Crumb", and his finale sounds pretty contemporary as well (the Marseillaise combined - and clashing - with the famous Dies Irae theme; are we supposed to understand "requiescat in pace, Rouget de Lisle"? In fact, in the very short liner notes Heidsieck explains that he wanted to oppose "The Day of Wrath" and "The Day of Glory"). "Hommage to Rouget de Lisle" was recorded live on 10 December 1988 but the audience is inobtrusive. The piano has a tendency to loose its pitch in part two, but it is of no importance. TT 1:05. Note that the concert was recently reissued by Integral Classics, with the complement of another variation for 2 pianos "alla Hindemith" (played with Tania Heidsieck) and two other compositions of Heidsieck, it is listed on the French sister company under ASIN B005OSP6H0. The score IS published, by Editions Symétrie (three dabya symetrie dot com), and I strongly advise pianists who would chance on this review to look at it. Kudos Mr. Heidsieck, and thank you for this, it is brilliant.


title: It's now been reissued with less and more

text:
A very enjoyable recital, recorded in September 1984 by Harnoy and the Orford String Quartet. Not only do you get those eleven engaging ballad-like melodies, played with gorgeous tone and much lyricism, songfulness and subtlety of phrasing by Harnoy, but the arrangements for string quartet are very cleverly done, not just solo cello over an indistinct carpet of sounds, but offering lots of nice dialoguing between the solo and the other instruments ("Michelle" is even scored for violin and cello duet, in which the violin is often given leading role).

Note however that first Pro Arte ([[ASIN:B000009KDC Beatles Book]]), then BMG ([[ASIN:B000003G0A Imagine]]) have reisued that recital, shorn of two numbers ("Strawberry Fields Forever/The Fool on the Hill" and "Something") but with the addition of the near-complete Beatles recital recorded by Harnoy with the Armin Electric Strings a year later, [[ASIN:B000GHBLAK Electric Beatles]] ("Act Naturally" was left out). The BMG reissue even adds a track, "Free as a Bird" in an arrangement for cello, piano and synthesizer, that seems to have been recorded especially for the occasion. The two reissues sell very cheap at the time of writing, so unless it is important for you to have the three missing tracks, the reissues are the preferable option.


title: Opportunity lost - in search of the authentic Marseillaise, part II

text:
This is the continuation of a review, or rather a lengthy essay on the sources of The Marseillaise and other revolutionary songs, begun under [[ASIN:B000009IGC Les Grands Hymnes Revolutionnaires (Erato)]] (where, at the time of writing, the disc is sold much cheaper).

And then, there is the Marseillaise. Pierre devotes 50 (!!) pages of explanations on its sources and variants. Rouget's original melody, printed in Strasburg within a month of its composition in April 1792 (it was known then as "The War Song for the Army of the Rhine"), was slightly different from the one universally know today (and Malgoire's version is interesting for orchestrating precisely that original melody). The orchestration customarily played today at official ceremonies is derived from the one that was established as late as 1887. The earliest known orchestration, and the one that would be the most "authentic" is the one made by Gossec for his lyric scene "Offrande à la liberté" ("Offering to Freedom" - and not "THE Offering to Freedom" or "L'Offrande à la liberté" as it is now called by whoever refers to it - which, granted, is not many people), first played as "Hymn à la liberté"/"Hymn to Freedom", and in which the Marseillaise is simply called "The March of the Marseillais". It was premiered at the Paris Opera on October 2, 1792, which is a mere six months after the song's inception: the success of Rouget's song was so blazing that it shot from Strasburg to Marseilles and from there to Paris within a few months. It was then known, indifferently, as the Air, or March, or Hymn, or Song of the Marseillais. It is from that lyric scene that the "Pot-Pourri" for winds was derived. A score of the complete "Offrande à la liberté" with a piano reduction by Louis Jadin was published at the time (also available on Gallica), but as Pierre explains (as a general rule, not specifically about "Offrande"), his own piano reductions follow more faithfully the orchestral originals than contemporary piano reductions. Inexplicably Pierre doesn't give the instrumentation used in the lyric scene itself and is unclear whether the manuscript score and/or parts remain, but sure enough: I've checked the online catalog of Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and they list it: "Offrande à la liberté : scène composée de l'air veillons au salut de l'Empire et de la marche des Marseillois avec récitatif, choeurs et accompagnement à grand orchestre", with a 21-page score and 17 parts. "Grand Orchestre": this is not a wind band, this is the Paris Opera orchestra! And it's been there for two centuries, gathering dust on the shelves of the library? I simply cannot believe that before or since 1989 no one went to BNF and copied all that to make a modern edition.

A year later, Gossec made a second orchestration of the Marseillaise, for the celebration of the first anniversary of the King's imprisonment on 10 August 1793, this one for wind band. Although it was, for the occasion, written to other words than those of Rouget (by a citizen Varon whose first name history seems to have lost all traces of), it too would certainly provide the basis of another "authentic" performance. However, looking at the score with piano reduction provided by Pierre for that version, it is evident that it isn't the one orchestrated by Dondeyne. First, Gossec wrote his outdoors version for three-part men's chorus and not for solo voice and chorus as the opera version (and to other words!), so at best Dondeyne's version would be a mix of both. But, more substantial still, the wind version is introduced by a long ritornello on the Marseillaise theme, where Gossec had opened the orchestral version with a short fanfare, and it is the latter that Dondeyne puts to music. This is confirmed by other discrepancies between Gossec's two versions as transcribed in Pierre's piano reduction.

But here, when reading carefully the fine print of Pierre's explanations, it becomes a real bag of snakes. He mentions a late publication, from 1798, by the print of the Conservatoire, of a score for solo, chorus and instrumental parts in an arrangement by Gossec for wind band accompaniment ("accompagnement pour musique d'harmonie"), and confesses to not understanding why "the hymn officially adopted as the national anthem wasn't printed earlier by the organization in charge of distributing the patriotic hymns to the provinces and the armies" (Pierre also mentions a set of parts in manuscript form, kept at the Library of the Conservatoire and that, says Pierre, served for the official ceremonies before that belated publication). Rather than following the 1793 version for wind band with its introductory ritornello, it was the same version as the 1792 opera version, but reduced to three stanzas (Rouget's 1, 5 and 6) which were, according to Pierre, those sung at the official ceremonies, and with only, if I understand his claim, a small melodic variant on the words "le jour de (gloire est arrivé)" - and I suppose Pierre is referring here only to the melodic shape of the lyrics, since there were (other than the number of stanzas) a number of differences with the Jadin score of the 1792 version, some of them substantial (if Jadin's score is to be believed, the last stanza was introduced by a long orchestral ritornello). The 1798 version was published under the title "Hymne à la liberté, by Rouget de Lisle, arranged for large chorus by Gossec". The earlier set of manuscript part that Pierre also mentions had the title "Hymne à la liberté, dit [aka] des Marseillais".

And it is the piano reduction of that 1798 version with its three stanzas and its title "Hymne à la liberté" that Pierre provides besides the one for the 1793 wind band version, rather than one for the original 1792 opera version - but, for some reason, with the (more widely accepted) melodic variant of the 1792 version. Pierre's title for his score seems to be a conflation of those of the printed parts and the earlier manuscript parts, since he adds "dit des Marseillais, by J. Rouget de Lisle, arranged for large chorus and orchestra by Gossec". Pierre doesn't give the exact instrumentation either, just mentioning "orchestre d'harmonie" (but he does give the instruments of the earlier manuscript parts, different from those of the 1793 version for winds), and as for location of the sources, indicates "author's collection" and adds "as of now, the copy mentioned is the only existing one".

Pierre is curiously enigmatic and unusually imprecise about the whole thing, and one could wonder what had become of that 1798 score and parts after his death. In a private correspondence, Frédéric Robert has indicated that they were held at the Music and Theatre Library of Sweden, in the collection bequeathed by collector Daniel Fryklund. And sure enough, I was able to purchase a CD-Rom with scans. The orchestration is slightly different from the one given by Pierre for the previous manuscript parts: 2 flutes (piccolo and big, instead of 1 piccolo and 2 flutes) 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpets (none in the parts of the manuscript version; in the material received from Sweden, there is only the part for one trumpet, but it says "1re trompette", which implies that there were two and the sheet for second trumpet is lost), 3 trombones (instead of "serpent"), double bass, timpani (none in the manuscript part). Also, and puzzling, there is no "melodic variant"; either I misunderstand Pierre (he has a way of "coding" the various melodic variants that makes it difficult to decipher), or he made a mistake in indicating one. Dondeyne's version definitely and unmistakably follows that 1798 version, but is it Gossec's orchestation? Apparently not. First, Dondeyne's score, as published by Editions Robert Martin, although it purports to be the "version Gossec", shows an orchestration much larger and thicker than Gossec could ever have dreamed of: piccolo, flute, oboe, bassoon, 6 clarinets, 4 saxophones, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 2 tubas, contra-bassoon, Double bass, timp. Second, judging by ear, it isn't Dondeyne's orchestration, at least not the published one, that Pichaureau performs, and what he does perform is certainly closer to Gossec's conception, although I'm not sure it is entirely Gossec: the trumpets don't come out very distinctly but I think they are there, covered by piercing clarinets and trombones, but the double-bass is reinforced by a low brass instrument, tuba or basso trombone, that is not in Gossec, and I certainly don't hear the timpani part. Also, the third verse is sung by a solo soprano, rather than soprano ("dessus") and tenor ("haute contre") as the score indicates. As for Wallace's Marseillaise on Nimbus, it is based on Pierre's piano reduction, despite arranger John Humphries evasiveness about it - but see my review for the details about this.

Still today, whatever orchestration they use, more or less based on 1798 or reconstructed ones, most recordings of the Marseillaise (Pichaureau, Langlet, Wallace, Boutry among them) sing those three stanzas, which is a shame as it doesn't give a complete view of Rouget's original conception, but is also absurd since the fifth contains topical references ("the accomplices of Bouillé") that are meaningless today. Interestingly, both the 1792 opera version and the 1798 version with three stanzas has the last one (the sixth in 1792 and third in 1798) played at a suddenly slowed-down larghetto tempo (for which Jadin added the indication "religious chant"). Pierre comments on this only for the 1798 version, but it was already there in 1792 at the opera and seems to have been Gossec's invention: there is nothing in Rouget's original conception that seems to imply it, and it certainly wasn't indicated in his original score. Although the stanza starts with the words "sacred love of the fatherland", the religious atmosphere sounds very contradictory with the general meaning of the lyrics there, which is as martial and aggressive as the rest: "...lead and sustain our vengeful arms". This is not exactly Brahms' Rhapsody for alto. Nonetheless the religious approach must have rapidly become part of the canon, since Berlioz keeps the tradition in 1830, and when the Marseillaise was revived in the late 1870s (it had been banned from Napoleon I to Napoleon III and after), it was still there (I've found testimonies of this in poet and critic Theodore de Banville's critical essays, also on Gallica).

The bottom line is that it is not clear whether Dondeyne's orchestration is based on Pierre's piano reduction or on those printed parts now in Sweden, but in any case it isn't entirey "authentic". The same is true with Humphries' for John Wallace - which, nonetheless, it is brilliant (Wallace's British chorus is more of a problem, "Revolution at tea-time"). But I find it truly incredible that nobody seized the opportunity of 1789 to publish a conductor's score and parts from the authentic 1798 Gossec orchestration, and that the material is still lying idle on the shelves of the Music and Theatre Library of Sweden.

And, with all that said, remains that an even more "authentic" Marseillaise remains to be heard, the one that they DID hear on the stage of the Paris Opera in October 1792. The sources are, apparently, accessible, and again it is incomprehensible that 1989 was not the occasion to fund and publish modern and available editions. Opportunity lost and I fear that it won't be found again until 2089.

So we are left with what we have and it will have to serve until then. Among all those CDs, Pichaureau is certainly valuable for being, with a CD generously timing 72:47 minutes, the most systematic and complete in its exploration of those revolutionary songs (and I need to track down the complete, 3-CD set), the old Guilde disc being "hors concours" because of its narration and its aged sonics. Wallace's program is only a complement to Berlioz' Symphonie funèbre, Malgoire's is mixed with opera excerpts, Plasson's disc is filled with a substantial and pre-Berliozian Chant National for three antiphonal chorus and orchestras of Méhul, and plays all the pieces in reorchestrations for full symphony orchestra. Langlet offers 15 minutes less of music, and his interpretation of the four hymns is generally appalingly bad; his program is more interesting for the various and rare Marches, Overtures, Symphonnies for wind band that he plays (also from the various ceremonies during the revolutionary era), but even there his interpretation is usually heavy-handed and sluggish.

And, after venting all my frustrations about the opportunity lost for truly authentic renditions, I am even freer to say that Pichaureau's collection is very enjoyable. Obviously the music isn't always great - those songs were not written to be sung by professional singers but by the people, much of it consists of simple and catchy melodies in repeated stanza/refrain form, and the "Marching Drill" music, as performed by Pichaureau, in a very playful manner, wouldn't be entirely out of place in an opera of Auber or Gretry, with young ladies in tutu lifting up their legs - fancy that for military battledress it would put an end to all wars.

But some of it is, indeed, great. The Marseillaise and Chant du Départ are, evidently, beyond any judgment - history HAS judged, and according to numerous contemporary testimonies the Marseillaise was an essential factor in many victories of the French popular armies in the 1790s, either by whipping them to renewed and frenetic courage, or by impressing the ennemy troups. So I don't know if it is mighty good music, but it certainly is good mighty music. But the undisputable masterpieces are Gossec's Marche lugubre (track 2) and Cherubini's Funeral Hymn (March) on the Death of General Hoche (track 19). Méhul's "Funeral Lament to the Memory of Féraud" (track 17) is also a superb funeral cantata. I've already mentioned Gosssec's "Chant du 14 juillet" (track 8) sounding like a chorus of Sarastro's priests. I would have liked for Pichaureau and Robert to play the version with military band of Gossec's "Hymn to Voltaire" (scoring is clarinets horns and bassoons, as in Catel's "Ode on the Warship..."), but the a-cappella version is quite beautiful, sounding like appeased Mendelssohn (track 18). That only verse 1 & 4 out of the hymn's seven are sung is not a problem, due to the song's strophic and repetitive nature.

Interpretively, Pichaureau is mostly very good. Where his program duplicates that of the old Guilde/Accord CDs, his singers are better and his interpretations usually preferable. His Marche lugubre is impressive, given a truly burdened, funeral and lugubrious atmosphere, on the opposite pole from John Wallace's blasting and devastating revolt against death (and twice as slow), but equally convincing. In Gossec's "Peuple éveille-toi" he is unfortunately heavy-handed and sluggish, solemn rather than enthusiastic and here Langlet on Adda and even the old Guilde with its piercing clarinets are preferable, but it is the exact opposite in the "Chant du 14 juillet", taken by Langlet at an impossibly funeral tempo and where Pichaureau sounds just right. Duvernoy's Marching Drill is slightly more lively with Pichaureau than with Langlet but not decisively so, and Gebauer's is played more playfully by Pichaureau (music for an equestrian parade of prancing horses by the Republican Guard), more militarily by Langlet; despite saucy little flutes, the other Geabauer Marching Drill is sluggishly played by the winds of the Air Force conducted by Capitaine Paul Liesenfelt on the old Guilde discs, and here Pichaureau is evidently preferable. In the orchestral introduction of Le Chant du Départ Pichaureau's brass sound disappointingly dulled and lacking impact compared to Langlet's, as if surrounded by a thick layer of foam, but on the other hand his woodwinds are deliciously piercing. In the Marseillaise his chorus sounds untidy, which isn't a problem for a chorus of revolutionary "sans-culottes", but also undernourrished. These guys would have been badly outnumbered at the battle of Valmy - but hey, they were, and thanks to the Marseillaise they won anyway.

So, as I said in introduction, despite all my issues with authenticiy, as of today you will find no better than this if you are interested in that kind of repertoire (other than the complete 3-CD set from which this compilation is excerpted). Note however that one drawback of the Erato disc is that its booklet doesn't include the texts, not even detailed descriptions of each work, only a general presentation by Robert. It's not so much a problem if you understand French, the singers are always intellegible.

Now I'll wait until 2089 to hear all these pieces played as they were three centuries before, using modern editions of the original scores and reconstructed serpents, tubae corvae and buccins. Hey, performers, that leaves you more than 70 years to learn how to play them perfectly. Start NOW!