title: The primary interest is Primrose's Bartok Viola Concerto, but conductor Ernest Bour is not negligible

text:
Any performance of Bartok's Viola Concerto by William Primrose is significant. The most famous viola player of his time, the man who, after Lionel Tertis, raised the instrument to the dignity of a solo actor and not one confined to filling the inner parts of the orchestra or string quartet, he was the composition's commissioner and premiere performer (with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra under Dorati, on December 2, 1949). Bartok didn't live to complete the work. Although, as he announced in a letter to Primrose shortly before his death, he had completed what he called "the draft", it took the form of unordered scraps of music paper, leaving it to his friend and collaborator Tibor Serly to make sense of them and orchestrate the work. Though not as popular as Bartok's Violin Concerto, the Viola Concerto as completed by Serly is a great work, sounding fully Bartok, all the way to its very transparent orchestration (announced by Bartok in his letter to Primrose).

Primrose recorded it in the studio, with Serly conducting the so-called "New Symphony Orchestra", a recording made probably in 1951 (the first reviews date from March 1952) by Bartok's own son and sound engineer Peter, who had founded a record label, Bartok Records, on which he published many recording premieres of Bartok's music, never widely distributed but of fundamental importance and retaining the aura of most prized items among the small niche of Bartok admirers and collectors: the first Piano Concerto (Leonid Hambro, conducted by violinist and Juilliard Quartet leader Robert Mann), Divertimento and Miraculous Mandarin-Suite (Serly), Dance Suite (Franco Autori), the Wooden Prince, Bluebeard's Castle and Cantata Profana  (Walter Susskind conducting the London Symphony Orchestra), the Violin and Piano Sonatas (Mann and Hambro). Mann also recorded the solo violin sonata but that wasn't a premiere (Menuhin made that in 1947), and neither was Contrasts with Stanley Drucker, Mann and Hambro - Bartok with Szigeti and Goodman had been there first. And now hark hark Bartok admirers: Bartok Records is still in existence, and most of these recordings have been reissued on CD - not all of them alas, like the Piano Concerto, but even those are available still on LP (while copies remain). The Viola Concerto is now paired with Süsskind's Cantata Profana (with Richard Lewis, sung in English), and it is an essential acquisition for any serious Bartok admirer.

That said, the concert performances of Primrose in the same work are also valuable documents. I am aware of three: this one with Orchestre National de France under Ernest Bour from November 23, 1950, often aired on the French public radio and published by Vogue in 1987, one with no less than the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam under Otto Klemperer from January 1, 1951, which you can find here under [[ASIN:B000006KFO Otto Klemperer at the Concertgebouw]] on Music & Arts, but I have its first CD release by the label Archiphon, ARC-101, not listed here, and I prefer the pairings (same Janacek Sinfonietta as on Music & Arts, but Schoenberg's Transfigured Night). For those interested in finding it, it is ASIN B000025TPY on the European sister companies, UPC 4015023901018. The third performance, which I don't have, is with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, published by the label Greenhill in a tribute to Eugen Jochum, [[ASIN:B000UZTVDC Eugen Jochum Conducts Mozart, Schumann & Bartok]]. The date is not given.

This performance under Bour is valuable for letting you hear more of Serly's orchestration than the studio recording of Peter Bartok, which spotlighted the soloist and the orchestra's strings but left woodwinds and brass to a cavernous background, often reduced to the status of mere shadow, when even they could be heard. The soloist's sound is also better focused - in the studio Primrose also stood in a rather cavernous sonic surrounding. The French sonics are somewhat shrill (making Primrose's tone sound a bit wiry in some spots), and they expose in the Finale a trumpet that sounds like a berserk mosquito - but the effect sits well with Bartok, and the rawness is not inappropriate in the concerto's brassy outbursts. The conductor and orchestra cope the best they can with Primrose's often very rhapsodic style (e.g. rhythmically free and dashing, with a lot of rubato), and there are spots where they seem to scramble to stay in sync with him, but the French "souffleurs" are sharp rather than mellow, which is less comfortable than the other way around, but more appropriate to Bartok. The general conception of Primrose is the same as on his studio recording, with in particular what could seem at the time a spacious and meditative introduction, where the score could have lent itself to a fiercer approach, and Primrose established something of an interpretive tradition here, which has been so extended in recent versions (in particular by Kashkashian-Eötvös and Bashmet-Boulez) as to make Primrose comparatively urgent. Another characteristic, already mentioned, is his very rhapsodic style, nowhere more in evidence than in all the quasi-cadenzas and recitativo passages.

But there are small differences too. Primrose and Bour take a slightly more animated first movement, less square in some passages, than Primrose and Serly, and likewise in the slow movement, the beautifully meditative "Adagio religioso" (but even at the slightly more animated tempo it remains beautifully meditative), but they stand out mainly for the unleashed fury they bring to the Finale. Not that it is necessarily preferable: the studio Finale didn't lack dash either, but it had more majesty and control, and benefited from the greater impact of the orchestral tutti, and the formidable acoustic presence of the viola despite (or because of) its cavernous surrounding. The French radio source also has its problems: the short spot of small deterioration at the very beginning isn't very obtrusive, but what happens at 7:53 track 1 is much more: the music recedes to a moment of soft dynamics and lets you suddenly hear a background applause - obviously the French radio utilized an already used tape, incorrectly erased. It must have been a fine concert, you hear the applause, off and on in the moments of softest dynamics, until 9:09... and then you hear the host's announcement! I couldn't hear who played, but it was "Mozart's G Minor".

So, despite its merits and because of its various flaws, this recording must take second place to the studio version. Hurry while Bartok Records still sells it, and its other CD reissues! But Primrose-Bour remains preferable to the one with Klemperer, recorded on acetate discs and suffering, regrettably, from soft but constant surface noise, not as vivid in orchestral and solo presence as the French recording, and interpretively not as dynamic in the first movement (and boasting a few downright mistakes, too), although there are moments in the 2nd and 3rd movement that are slightly better.

The Viola Concerto and Primrose remain the primary interest of Vogue's release, but it was meant primarily as a tribute to French conductor Ernest Bour. Born in 1913, Bour was active from the early 1940s (he is remembered for his pioneering recording of Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges from 1948, reissued by Testament, [[ASIN:B000003XIQ L'Enfant Et Les Sortileges]]) to the end of the 1990s. As musical director of the Strasbourg Orchestra and Opera in the fifties, he conducted (in French language) many French first stage performances of major contemporary operas, like Wozzeck, Bluebeard's Castle, The Rake's Progress and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. As the successor of Hans Rosbaud at the helm of the German Baden-Baden radio orchestra, in the sixties and seventies, he created innumerable compositions of new and cutting-edge music, some of which are documented on the Wergo label. He died in 2001. Those who own the two 4-CD sets of live recordings of 20th-Century classics published by Astrée, [[ASIN:B00008EQNL Music of the 20th Century]] and [[ASIN:B00008EQNP Music of the 20th Century V2]], (and that includes reviewer Jeffrey Lipscomb and myself) hoard them like Fafner his gold (hoping that no Siegfried will come along).

Claude Helffer (1922-2004), the soloist in Bartok's 2nd piano concerto, was himself a French pianist noted for his commitment to contemporary music, his association with Xenakis and his early LP recordings of works by Xenakis, Boulez, Berg, Schoenberg, Debussy... In this concert from February 26, 1969, his approach to Bartok's piano writing is not barbaric, pounding, loud and massive as it is under the hands of most other pianists. He adopts fast tempos, actually fairly close to those of Stephen Bishop ([[ASIN:B00000E4A9 Bela Bartok Piano Concerti Nos 1 2 3 Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich  (Philips)]]), but he comes nowhere near the latter's hair-raising energy. On the contrary, abetted by a bright and clear recording, the French pianist's touch is rather small-scaled and dry, staccato, taut, light and lean, with a toned-down dynamic range, lending the concerto an interesting, choreographic flavor. By doing so, Helffer is actually being true to Bartok's numerous p and mf markings, especially in the tight, urgent and finely accented Finale: there, in this approach (on the opposite pole from Richter's slow, massive and barbaric power, [[ASIN:B000002SCX Tchaikovsky: Piano Concertos Nos. 1,2 & 3 / Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5 / Bartok: Piano Concerto No. 2]]), Bartok becomes evocative of some modern-day Rameau. The orchestra on the other hand lacks brightness and suffers excess dryness. This is definitely a concert version, too - and not one by the Chicago symphony. Orchestre national is not always together, many details can't be heard and sometimes one suspects that it is not because of the recording, but simply because the players failed to enter (like 1st horn and 2nd trumpet at 6:58 in the 2nd movement, between bars 95 and 105, or trombones at 1:55 in the Finale, measures 113 and 114). Bour is overall a no-nonsense conductor, though he occasionally favors the grossly exaggerated rallentando, such as after bar 210 at 6:32 in the first movement ("rall. al Meno mosso") or after bar 195 at 3:29 in the Finale ("rall. al Meno vivo"), where his beat of respectively 60 and 72 is a far cry from Bartok's indicated 81 and 94. In the second movement, the lightness becomes matter-of-factness. It is not just a question of fast tempo: one needs only to compare with Weissenberg and Ormandy who adopt exactly the same ([[ASIN:B00000E6PC Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3; Bartok: Piano Concerto No. 2]]), or even with Anda and Fricsay, who are swifter ([[ASIN:B000001GPW Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos.1-3]]), to realize that the emotion here rises from being surrounded by the hushed presence of the strings as by the mysterious whispers of the night, and from the sense of suspension and expectation conveyed by the the pianist - which you might also call "poetry". Helffer and Bour here are just prosaic. In sum, this is a flawed (especially on the part of the orchestra) but not entirely uninteresting approach inasmuch as it offers, in its quasi-choreographic lightness, a minority view of the concerto. But it should be taken really as a bonus to Primrose's Viola Concerto.

But Orchestre National was obviously (and probably still is) a body capable of the worst and the best. Their Miraculous Mandarin-suite under Bour dates from only a few months later, 13 December of the same year, and it is remarkable, in the orchestra's precision in this fierce score, their ability both to raise a racket and play with sensuousness and, under the conductor's stewardship, their ability to play with much character and no trace of expressive tameness. Try the trombone glissandos at 3:59, it is one of the spots the listener eagerly looks for, and they are swooping perfect. Bour is remarkably on top of the idiom, remarkably responsive to Bartok's constant, bar-to-bar rubato-like shifts of tempo but even better, he isn't a slavish literalist either. Sometimes he applies a touch of French restraint - his "molto rit" at 4:43 is quite minimal - and sometimes he applies very effective expressive devices of his own, as the hesitant, tottering steps at 12:00. It shows not only a great familiarity with the score but also that, though directing the concert suite, Bour keeps an eye on its balletic origin: this is the spot where the girl (we know what she is but I'm afraid that the ever-prudish Amazon robots might censor me if I use the worn word), prompted by the Mandarin, "at last overcomes her reluctance and begins a hesitant dance". The final romp has all the fierce fury and brutality it requires. The sonic perspective changes in the last two bars, although it seems to be the same orchestra, tempo and pitch. Maybe it was done in a patch session after the concert to edit out the applause. It will be heard only with headsets.

So, Primrose and his Viola Concerto may appear as the disc's primary interest, but Bour's Bartok isn't negligible either.


title: In Bartok's Music for Srings, Mravinsky is a giant and all the others are midgets

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There have been - and had been, before this recording was made, in February 1965 - many recordings of Bartok's Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta, and many different approaches to the score. There were those who were very true to Bartok's tempo indications and style and played the piece with grim urgency and formidable energy, like Harold Byrns in his premiere recording (1949, see my review, [[ASIN:B006HPFBMO Bela Bartok Music for String Instruments, Instruments, Percussion and Celesta : Los Angeles Chamber Symphony . Harold Byrns Capitol 10"]]), Fricsay (1953), van Beinum (1955), Solti (1955 and 1963) or Reiner (1958). There were those who strayed considerably and turned the music into a funeral dirge, and no-one more than Stokowski in 1957/8 with his egregious (but strangely effective) first movement played in more than 10 minutes (see my review of [[ASIN:B000FPHFJE Leopold Stokowski Conducts Bartok, Barber, & Schoenberg]]), making the music sound like lost souls moaning in limbo (but Kubelik in 1951 with Chicago on Mercury, Dorati in 1960 with the LSO on Mercury, Bernstein in New York in 1961 all went in that direction) . There were those who brought great refinement to Bartok, like Karajan with Berlin in 1960 or (if I may cross a bit the boundary of 1965) Boulez with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1967, which didn't exclude great propulsive dynamism in the fast movements. There were those who raced in the Finale and those who mused and turned it into a peasant dance similar to Bartok's folk-inspired pieces like Dance Suite or Hungarian Sketches (Dorati with the LSO - Scherchen live in Sweden in 1954 did both, [[ASIN:B000003O76 Tribute to Hermann Scherchen "The Best-Known Unknown"]]).

But there hadn't been anything like Mravinsky, and I doubt that there has been since.

His Bartok isn't refined, it isn't even rough-hewn: it is brutal. Everything sounds big, and bigger than life. When the celesta first enters in the first movement, at 5:54, it doesn't sound mysterious, refined and ghostly, it sounds big. If a ghost, it is a frightening one. The harp in the second movement, at 2:41, doesn't sound like it's seated at the back of the orchestra, it sounds big. Mravinsky doesn't turn the first movement into a gloomy funeral dirge, but into an angst-ridden statement. It isn't so much a matter of tempo - he moves urgently, but not as urgently as Byrnsn, Fricsay, Solti or van Beinum. But it is a matter of phrasings and color. He makes no attempt at obtaining a refined, mysterious string tone, from the beginning there is tension, and his rising to the climax, through both crescendo and acceleration, is breathlessly intense. I am probably associating too much to the music, but this sounds like Bartok in Stalingrad.

And the explosive intensity of the second movement. Just try the beginning: in no other version have I heard the timps blast out so crushingly. And listen at 0:22. All the other recordings have difficulties catching the timps here, because their sound resonates all over the place and they sound fuzzy, if not even indistinct. Not with Mravinsky, they sound very dry, and it is very typical of the whole. Again it is not so much a matter of tempo - Mravinsky is urgent, sometimes even breathlessly so, but others have been even more, and he is not constantly urgent, as in the passage in pizzicati starting at 3:21, taken at a very leisurely pace. It is a matter of the rage, the slamming brutality with which everybody, strings and percussions, articulate their phrases, as if their lives were at stake. The sonics are great, with great stereo separation between the two string orchestras, and the basses come out clearly and powerfully, adding to the general bite and tension.

The string phrases that follow the soft percussive introduction in the slow movement are usually played as hushed, plangent, moaning calls (even if is with an undercurrent of menace), but not with Mravinsky (whose percussive introduction sounds anything but "soft", with a xylophone more assertive than questing): they sound like grim cries of despair, with an undertone of accusation - I am aware that associating such images is far-fetched, but it evoked the souls of all those died in the camps of all times and countries, indicting the living: "why didn't you do anything?" Two details are very typical of the way Mravinsky shapes the music and of his rejection of any "refinement", and unique of him: at 4:56, I'm not sure what he does, an unprescribed appoggiatura it seems, or maybe he has the cellos play arco their descending semi-tone rather than, as written, as a pizzicato, but it creates a harmonic clash and lends great impact. Even more striking, immediately after, at 5:04, the celesta returns over a long, aching phrase of the violins in their high register. Everybody plays it softly and mysteriously (Bartok indicates no dynamic level over the phrase, but the violins' previous one was a pianissimo, so one presumes that the pianissimo continues). But not Mravinsky: he plays it forte, and again, it sounds like a cry of despair.

And to finish, Mravinksy has his Leningraders hurl into the Finale with unleashed drive. Again I can't resist drawing attention to a few very typical details: the blasting timps at 1:25 that launch the cavalcade that follows, the blasting offbeat chords at 1:32 and 1:38, and the glissandos to sf at 2:23 and 2:26 - I can't find a better word to describe it than great "schwung". Mravinsky's great acceleration from 2:35 to 3:21 is suitably breathless, and the return of the first movement's music that occurs at that point is urgent and searingly intense. And another highly idiosyncratic touch of Mravinsky: the sudden and unindicated slowdown of that same music at 4:36. It is highly exceptionable, the kind of thing that would have made many scream at Stokowski or Bernstein, but with Mravinsky, there is no objecting anything. And there are no words to describe the degree of frenzy when comes the coda and the return of the "fast" music at 5:46.

It's a live recording - Mravinsky quit the studio after 1961 and his premiere recording of Shostakovich's 12th Symphony; coincidentally but appropriately, his last recording was also of the 12th, in April 1984 - and there are coughs. How could anybody cough during a performance of such intensity? How could they even breathe? Some of them deserved to be sent to the Gulag, if not shot in the neck immediately after the concert, or even during, the music would have easily covered the detonations.

Karajan, Fricsay, van Beinum, Solti, Reiner, Bernstein, Boulez: all great conductors, no doubt, and they all recorded great versions of Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta (Stokowski's is in another category). But, compared to Mravinsky, they are all timid and bland dwarfs. I'm not saying that this is "the greatest" version of Bartok's masterpiece: it is too different, too singular, too outlandish, too exceptionable, too brutal and not refined enough to be considered the "version of reference". Simply, it is huge. The "version of reference", if even there is such a thing, would be one of those that remains close to the score, style and spirit of Bartok - say, Reiner or Solti (I'm excluding Fricsay only because he's in early mono, and Bartok's Music for Strings, with its to antiphonal string orchestras, needs stereo). From there, you can build, and get "other views", more refined, more funeral, more you name it. Mravinsky is one of those, one that any serious Bartok admirer must have... and even the less serious admirers.

Note that there have been other issues of the same Bartok with other pairings: Stravinsky's Apollo and Debussy's Faun ([[ASIN:B000001HCE Mravinsky Edition 8]]), Sibelius' 7th Symphony augmented of Swan of Tuonela ([[ASIN:B000R5O7RU Mozart: Overture/Marriage of a Figaro/Bartok: Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta/Sibelius: The Swan of Tuonela/Symphony No. 7 (The Mravinsky Legacy, Volume 4)]]) or Wagner Overtures ([[ASIN:B001HPFYNA Mravinsky conducts Bartok Sibelius + Wagner (Melodiya)]]). Choice will be a matter of program preference (peas, rice or potatoes to go with your steak?), price, and availability of course. I'll return later to Mravinsky's Debussy Faun and Stravinsky's Agon, but since it may be in some time, I didn't want to wait to let everybody who'd chance on this entry, know what a phenomenal version of Bartok's Music for Strings this is. It alone makes the purchase worthwhile.


title: Not your "standard" versions, but a great memento to the art of Stokowski

text:
1957 saw three major recordings of Barber's Adagio: Stokowski's in January (22 & 29), Munch's with Boston in March ([[ASIN:B00000E6PH String Serenades]]) and Ormandy's with Philadelphia in April ([[ASIN:B0000029WJ Bernstein: Candide; Barber: Adagio; other American masterpieces]]). Stokowski's Barber: lush string tone, and a surprisingly flowing pace (more even than Toscanini's, [[ASIN:B00000IYO9 Barber: Premiere Recordings]]) - surprising, that is, for those grown on the 1971 recording of Bernstein (compare his 9:53 to Stokowski's 6:25, [[ASIN:B0000CD5GJ Barber: Adagio for Strings; Violin Concerto / Schuman / Ives / Copland ~ Bernstein / Stern]]) and for those who'd associate Stokowski with the notion of a conductor reveling in the lush sound of strings for its own sake. When you listen to Stokowski after Toscanini, the atmosphere is more lush and nostalgic than intense (the nostalgia of Knoxville's things past), although Stokowski produces plenty of intensity at the build-up to the climax (circa 3:30 to 4:40). But when you compare Stokowski to Bernstein, there is an element of passionate urgency that is absent from Bernstein - the nostalgia is not an appeased one, but one of passionate longing.

Incidentally, the CD was published in 1986, and the (uncredited) liner notes are very imaginative about the dating of these recordings: "the three performances in this collection were recorded in Manhattan Center, New York City, N.Y. - the Bartok in the early autumn of 1959, Schoenberg's Transfigured Night early in the summer of 1960, and Barber's Adagio for Strings in the early autumn of 1967" - and all that with the same producer and sound engineer. But the great online Stokowski discography of Enno Rikiena does not confirm this. All these recordings were part of a batch made by Stokowski in 1957 and early 1958 for Capitol, which included also various Bach transcriptions, Glière's Third Symphony, Frank Martin's Petite Symphonie Concertante, Charles Leoeffler's Pagan Poem and various shorter pieces. But those liner notes certainly fooled Schoenberg specialist Dr Wayne Shoaf, whose online Schoenberg discography lists two different Stokowski recordings, one from August 1957 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (an obvious confusion with the orchestra playing in Holst's Planets on the CD reissue in EMI's Capitol/FDS series, [[ASIN:B0000589T6 Holst: The Planets / Schoenberg: Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) ~ Stokowski]]), and one from "Summer of 1960" with Leopold Stokowski's Symphony Orchestra. No, it is the latter orchestra and the former date.

So Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht / Transfigured Nigth was recorded on 23 & 24 August of the same year 1957 as his Barber - Stokowski's second studio recording, after the one made for RCA in 1952, [[ASIN:B007MPAHEU Schoenberg: Gurrelieder]] - and surprisingly it almost sits on an opposite expressive pole from Barber's Adagio: expansive and sometimes a bit languid even (though never extreme, as Ormandy had been in his premiere recording of the orchestral version made in 1934 with the Minneapolis Orchestra, [[ASIN:B00000G4MH Eugene Ormandy - Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra - Early North American Recordings Vol. 1 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 / Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (recorded in 1934-35)]]), and investing the music with more tenderness than passion, even if it can develop into aching tenderness, and although Stokowski can animate the music to fine intensity when the going gets "leidenschaftlich" (passionate), at 8:46 for instance, or again around 20:00 - "etwas bewegter" / "a bit more agitated" is Schoenberg's marking here - or 21:25, "beschleunigend", accelerating. His sonics benefit from a huge dynamic range - at the beginning, I wouldn't have vouched that it was entirely natural, with the whole orchestra seeming to approach from a distance, the solo viola artificially jumping at you at 0:53, and a huge swell of sound between 1:25 and 1:45, but after that nothing drew attention, except the fine transparency and clarity of textures, and the beautifully refined violin tone at 24:16 ("innig", interior).

A few months later came Bartok's Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta, 18 & 20 December 1957 and 21 January 1958. It is a highly personal account, like no-one else's, highly objectionable, if not infuriating, and yet I find it very convincing in its unique way. In capsule, it is slow, ponderous, thick, and very powerful.

Because it builds its arch-form, crescendo to a clashing climax and back to silence, through a fugal development in a brooding and atmospheric manner, we tend to think of the first movement as a "slow" movement, but it isn't really: Bartok's metronome indications and estimated timing of 6:30 makes it a rather swift movement, one that is charged with grim tension, and it is the way most early performers played it: for those I've heard, the premiere recording of Harold Byrns on Capitol from 1949, Fricsay in 1953, van Beinum and Solti in 1955 (and Solti again in his 1963 remake), Reiner at the end of 1958 (I'll send the product links to the comments section). Karajan in 1949 had been more expansive than that, but still within reasonable limits (he was more urgent in his 1960 remake). The one big exception had been Kubelik with Chicago for Mercury in 1953, taking a very funeral and gloomy movement clocking 9:02 (but building a climax of devastating intensity). Cantelli had also taken a very expansive first movement, clocking 8:32, but that was in concert, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, on 13 December 1952, and the recording surfaced only at the end of the LP era (it has been reissued by Music & Arts in their great Cantelli box, [[ASIN:B00207PKBU The Art of Guido Cantelli (New York Concerts and Broadcasts, 1949-1952)]]. In 1960 Antal Dorati, again for Mercury, took something of that approach, though not as extreme as Kubelik: 8:03. Bernstein did, though, in his 1961 recording: 9:10.

But Stokowski! An egregious 10:10. And it is tempo, but not just tempo: the textures, too. The sonics are somewhat opaque, there is a halo of tape hiss, the strings sound "big" and very present, the celli are thick, but focused and clear. It exudes a mood of crushed gloom rather than grim intensity.

It could be grotesque, but I find it strangely effective. At that tempo, you have time to listen attentively to each of the six string parts, and there is something uniquely vocal to their timbres and phrasings, plaintive, moaning. They made me think of lost souls aimlessly wandering in limbo. Another notable and fascinating feature of Stokowski's interpretation is the way (unlike almost everybody else) he hardly accelerates at all to create the rise of intensity to the climax. The formidable tension in the crescendo and climax comes from the very slowness of the pace, and its feeling of implacability. The only other version I've heard that does it that way his Harnoncourt's ([[ASIN:B0001GCMP4 Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta / Divertimento for String Orchestra]]).

The other movements aren't as egregiously slow, and Stokowski's second movement is even well with the "norm" of the recordings of the 1950s and 1960s that I've heard, but again it isn't just tempo: the textures are thick and heavy, the rhythms don't give a feeling of dynamism, some sections within the movement give a very pedestrian impression. But what you get in exchange is a feeling of power, thanks to the potent basses, and within his very moderate tempi Stokowski has his strings articulate crisply enough (although not with the ultimate bite). The stereo separation is good and lets you hear clearly the constant exchanges between the two groups of strings (Bartok has his orchestra divided in two), but the timpani hardly register, and there is an awkward splice at 6:00, where the sonic perspective changes. The slow movement is more expansive than anybody else's I've heard from that era save Scherchen (but Scherchen was in concert, with the Swedish Radio, in 1954, [[ASIN:B000003O76 Tribute to Hermann Scherchen "The Best-Known Unknown"]]), but it can take it. Stokowski's is as atmospheric as anybody's. Again the textures are somewhat opaque, but I think Stokowski has the opening phrases played by solo instruments, which is not instructed in the score and is a nice touch, adding to the feel of despondency. Under Stokowski, Bartok's other fast movement, the Finale, is again inordinately slow, although Dorati in 1960 came close. But where all the other versions seemed to compete for who would race faster (and none raced as fast as Bartok's estimated performance timing), with Stokowski it sounds like the cavalcade of heavily armored chargers (try the section starting at 1:51, it is very telling). But again, it is typical how he has his orchestra articulate the opening phrase, very staccato, to offset any impression of sluggishness.

Ultimately, these recordings, especially of the Bartok, would better not serve as anybody's "standard" version. But they make great complements to less idiosyncratic performances. They offer what less idiosyncratic and more "standard" performances don't offer: a great, and unique personality. For that reason, they are also a great memento of the art of Stokowski.


title: Mitropoulos invests these works with unique passion and intensity - and now on CD!

text:
Hark hark, ye sons of heart: this LP has been reissued on CD by Sony Japan, SRCR 1702, and the reissue is now listed on this website (which doesn't necessarily mean it is offered), [[ASIN:B00005G7S9 Transfigured Night / Fantasia on a theme by Thoma Tallis]]. Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis had already been made available on CD by Sony, together with Mitropoulos' recording of the 4th Symphony and Stokowski's 6th, [[ASIN:B003D1WXFI Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F minor / Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis / Symphony No. 6 in E minor]] (it is now also on a label called Retrospective, [[ASIN:B00005UPOT Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphony No. 4 - Mitropoulos / Symphony No. 6 - Stokowski ; New York Philharmonic]]) but it is the first time Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht/Transfigured Night is available on the digital medium. For those who couldn't wait for an offer to show up on this website and would like to go immediately hunt after it, look on the Japanese sister company or search after the barcode, 4988009170237.

It is worth it. First, the sonics: the recording was made in March 1958, and it is, in Sony's transfer, a sonic splendor, of breathtaking presence, vividness, detail, transparency of textures. I can't recall having heard, or having been so alert to Schoenberg's dense and intricate part-writing, in any other recording of Transfigured Night. The cellos are awesome, not only in sonic presence, but in virtuosity: you can hear every one of their fast sixteenth-note, clearly articulated. Who needs digital, when you have this? In Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, the separation between the full string orchestra and the string quartet registers well (and the quartet is beautifully clear when it plays alone at circa 5:30), although some inner parts of the full orchestra (second violins) don't come out clearly at some points.

And then, Mitropoulos: this was his last recording with the New York Philharmonic and for Columbia. Bernstein had shared co-directorship with him in the 1957-58 season, and Columbia was betting their money on their young American hero, as the recording schedules in those months clearly indicate (see James H. North's discography of the New York Philharmonic, [[ASIN:0810858541 New York Philharmonic: The Authorized Recordings, 1917-2005]]) - and a clever choice, too: much was gained of course in Bernstein's rise to unshared stewardship of the orchestra, but something was lost as well. From top, Mitropoulos leads a uniquely urgent and intense Verklärte Nacht. Compare the 25:13 it takes him to get through, to Stokowski's 27:49 (in 1952 for RCA, [[ASIN:B007MPAHEU Schoenberg: Gurrelieder]]) and 28:16 (in 1957 for EMI, [[ASIN:B000FPHFJE Leopold Stokowski Conducts Bartok, Barber, & Schoenberg]]), Horenstein's 28:52 (in 1956 for Vox, [[ASIN:B000001K5U Till Eulenspiegel Merry Pranks]]) or to Ormandy's languid 32:00 (with Minneapolis in 1934, the premiere recording of the orchestral version, [[ASIN:B00000G4MH Eugene Ormandy - Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra - Early North American Recordings Vol. 1 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 / Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (recorded in 1934-35)]]) and 30:25 (in 1950 with Philadelphia, reissued in their Centennial box, [[ASIN:B00003E4CG The Philadelphia Orchestra the Centennial Colection]]). The approach lacks perhaps the sense of large breathing and slow unfolding at the beginning and at the end, it presses a bit and Schoenberg's arch-romantic composition can take a touch more languor, but as the passion develops Mitropoulos fills it with unique tension.

But the approach works even better in Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis. Great pairing, the Tallis Fantasia is one of the most immense works for strings alone of the literature, all centuries included. Even considering that approach to tempo was generally swifter before the 1960s (witness the recordings of Toscanini live in 1938 and 1945, Boult in 1940 and still in 1954, Walter live with New York in 1953, Karajan in 1953, Steinberg in Pittsburg in 1958 and Ormandy still in 1963, all between 14 and 15 minutes - almost everybody since has been above 16, with Bernstein the most extreme at 18:04 - see the comments section for the product links), Mitropoulos fills it again with breathtaking urgency and intensity: he runs through in 12:42! I can't say that Mitropoulos is entirely unique here, because Pierre Monteux, recorded live in 1963 with Boston, has been as swift, even a touch swifter, in a strikingly similar approach - if possible even a hair more passionate (available only in the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 12-CD centennial box, [[ASIN:B0013L92WC Boston Symphony Orchestra - Symphony Hall Centennial Celebration, From the Broadcast Archives 1943-2000]]). Their climax (with Mitropoulos from circa 8:15) is unique and uniquely intense, with a way of hurling into it that belongs only to them, even counting the numerous subsequent versions. With them, the Tallis Fantasia is no grandiose and noble and solemn and brooding and mourning processional as it is under the baton of Barbirolli or the later Boult or Silvestri, it is a passionate and intense tribute to the dead - or, who knows, the longing remembrance of a summer of love. The Tallis Fantasia is a possible candidate for the music you'd want to be played at your funeral - but NOT in the interpretations of Mitropoulos and Monteux. This is for declaring your love to the woman - sorry, partner - of your life. Perfect match with Schoenberg's lushly erotic fantasy.

The CD is only 38 minutes long, but it is a CD to cherish.


title: Mitropoulos fills these works with unique passion and intensity - and now on CD!


title: Two great forgotten scores of Honegger

text:
Honegger was primarily an orchestral composer - he does have a catalog of piano pieces, which nicely fills one CD, of songs and chamber works, from solo violin sonata to three string quartets, but they are not the most essential and significant part of his oeuvre, and, by his great biographer Harry Halbreich's admission, past 1923 (which is early in Honegger's compositional career), "chamber music occupies only a marginal place in his output, and his last years are entirely devoid of it".

His orchestral output seems a well-know quantity: five symphonies, a number of symphonic poems (among which Pacific 231, Rugby, Mouvement symphonique No. 3 and Pastorale d'été are the most famous, but there are a number of others and highly valuable ones), the great oratorios (from King David to A Christmas Cantata), the few operas and operettas. Honegger was also a prolific film composer, and the CD era has seen the publication, mainly through the ministry of Swiss conductor Adriano and Naxos, of many symphonic suites derived from them.

But reading Halbreich's biography and its year-by-year accounts ([[ASIN:1574670417 Arthur Honegger]]), the abundance of Honegger's compositional activities is breathtaking, and they yielded many works that are today entirely forgotten, many of which never even published, and some even lost. It seems close to unthinkable that a composer should be so casual about what comes out of his pen that he wouldn't carefully keep a copy in his archive, even with no immediate prospect of being published, but then, we also tend to forget that copying wasn't so easy before invention of the Xerox machine. It is mainly in the realm of ballet that Honegger's works are forgotten. Halbreich lists 19 of them. They disappeared not so much because the music would have been inferior Honegger, but because, for various and extra-musical reasons, they didn't meet any success when they were premiered. Of those 19, Halbreich mentions that the scores of three are lost, and three more retained only in fragmentary form. The only ones to have some currency on disc are "Le Dit des Jeux du Monde", one of Honegger's earliest compositions (1918) and the one that established him as a major young composer on the French scene, and "Horace victorieux" from 1921 (because, from the start, it had a career as a concert piece). "Skating Rink", Honegger's fourth ballet, from 1922, has also been recorded ([[ASIN:B000004A3T Skating Rink Choreographic Symphony L'idee]]).

But Halbreich and the label Timpani have done invaluable service to the Honegger admirer by unearthing some of those forgotten ballets. I've reviewed the previous disc published by Timpani, in 1993, which had the 1934 Semiramis and other unpublished scraps retrieved by Halbreich (see my review of [[ASIN:B0000285FB Semiramis]]). It was the fifth commission from Honegger by Ida Rubinstein, the famous dancer, actress, narrator and wealthy patroness (she had commissioned Debussy and D'Annunzio's Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and the incidental music to D'Annunzio's Phaedre was her second commission to Honegger, with Joan at the Stake, on a libretto of famous French and Catholic poet and playwright Paul Claudel, being her sixth and last), and the second collaboration of Honegger with the famous French writer Paul Valéry. So this CD, recorded in November 1995 in Romania (I'm sure it was cheaper), which gathers Rubinstein's commissions No. 1 (incidental music to "L'Impératrice aux rochers") & 4 ("Amphion", and Honegger's first collaboration with Valéry), is the ideal sequel and companion to the previous disc. And in case you wonder, commission No. 3 was called "Les Noces d'Amour et de Psyche", and consisted only of the orchestration of 45 minutes of excerpts from Bach's French and English Suites. The incidental music to Phaedre has been recorded by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, [[ASIN:B0002I692I A.Honegger - Symphony No.2, Phedre: Suite for the Tragedy by d'Annunzio, Three extracts from film 'Napoleon']].

In his (as always) remarkable liner notes, Halbreich indicates that the subject of Amphion had been conceived by Valéry as early as 1891, before Honegger was even born, and he had first offered it to the young Debussy, but the project failed to materialize. Honegger composed his score in 1929, in parallel with the very lyrical Cello Concerto, and just before the very aggressive and raging First Symphony (a Koussevitzky commission for the 50th Anniversary of the BSO), and it was premiered at the Paris Opera in June 1931, to great success (unlike Semiramis, which made a huge flop). Nonetheless, the work didn't make a stronghold in the repertoire, got very few subsequent productions and was soon forgotten, although in 1948 Honegger tried to salvage at least part of it, in the form of quasi symphonic suite in three sections, "Prelude-Fugue and Postlude". But that too is very rarely played if ever, and I am aware of only three recordings, the old one in the early 1950s by Georges Tzipine ([[ASIN:B00011RUP6 Rarities of Georges Tzipine]]) and the more recent ones by Marius Constant on Erato ([[ASIN:B000009JRE Honegger: Le Chant de Nigamon / Monopartita / Napoleon Suite / Preludes]]) and Thierry Fischer on Hyperion ([[ASIN:B001F4YGYG Une Cantate De Noel Horace Victorieux]]).

Valéry's subject is grandiose and even somewhat grandiloquent: Apollo bringing the lyre (e.g. music) to the rough-hewn and uncultured Amphion (e.g. mankind). And Amphion invents music, first the scales, then the fugue, and his playing moves the rocks, which assemble to form a temple to Apollo: music has created architecture.

The plot presented a formidable challenge for a composer, since he was to evoke in music first the absence of music, and then its invention: sounds like an Escher etching in music. That Valéry later commented that "I needed a great musician, I found him" could have been just flattery, but no: Honegger brilliantly picks the gauntlet. The beginning is strikingly inventive and evocative, violin harmonics, cellos softly striking the strings with the bows' wood, soft brushes of oriental-sounding percussion, this is a sound world more easily associated with Villa Lobos' "Amazonian" inspirations, and even evoking Varèse's Ionisation when it returns and is more developed, track 7, for the big dance of Amphion. At the beginning of track 2, "The Dreams" of Ampion, with a brief moment of more col legno strings, it is Ligeti and the early and still radical Penderecki who came to mind (had he lived long enough to hear their works, I don't think Honegger would have been adverse to the notion that they wrote "music before the invention of music"... some would call it "music after the death of music", but not me). With the entrance of the brutal Amphion, connoisseurs of Honegger are in more familiar territory, at times brutal and dissonant, at times delicately lyrical in a manner evocative of Stravinsky's Apollo Musagetes (premiered in Paris in 1928, as Halbreich points out), oftentimes beautifully lush, sunny and sweeping. Track 7, when Amphion, having awaken from his dreams, seizes the lyre which Apollo has left on the ground, and pulls mysteriously soft sounds out of it, at 0:55, before bursting into a frenzy, is a moment of jaw-dropping imagination. The invention of the scales, wildly scurrying all over (track 9), is another one, the music for string orchestra of Britten comes to mind, from the Simple Symphony to Illuminations. The four-part Fugue (track 10) is grandiose - I wish I could learn to be Bach as fast as Amphion, it took him about 10 minutes! But no, Apollo lever left a lyre to me - I guess he figured that lyre players also need an audience.

Baritone Olivier Lallouette (Apollo) sings remarkably well his big aria, track 5 (and kudos also to the composer, Valéry's text here was dangerously preachifying), the three (Romanian) sopranos aren't entirely ideal but it is a small detail, the (Romanian) chorus sings remarkably well, and I hear no trace of foreign accent (when the text is intelligible). Also remarkable is narrator Laurent Manzoni (Amphion) in track 8, his moment of "melodrama", spoken text over music. He's got a fine, baritone timbre, his French diction is perfect. The text can easily be grandiloquent, but he avoids grandiloquence, while not lapsing either into matter-of-factness. Bravo. And the musical accompaniment is beautifully lyrical, forming, with the ensuing "invention of the scales", the basis of the "Prelude" in the 1948 "Prelude-Fugue-and-Postlude".

Judging from the three versions of "Prelude, Fugue and Postlude", conductor Jean-François Antonioli (prior to this recording I knew him as a pianist) and his Romanian orchestra are also admirably on top of the music. "Prelude Fugue and Postlude" reproduces in toto the music of tracks 8 to 12, from the melodrama of Amphion to the end, e.g. 15 minutes of music out of the work's 37:30, excising of course the chorus and soloists, and indeed it is the more orchestrally lush and grandiose part. "Prelude Fugue and Postlude" remains entirely valid as an independent piece, as it lets you hear Honegger's beautiful orchestral invention without letting it be covered by the voices - something like Wagner's "Ring without words". But the Varesian music for Amphion's Dance, track 7, followed by a dreamy cantilena on the flute, is also great music, and it can be heard only in the complete Ballet, as well as the various other moments which I have tried to describe.

So, with such great music, why did it fall into oblivion? Probably because, like Debussy's Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Stravinsky's Persephone, the genre is hybrid and difficult to categorize, not simply a ballet, not really an opera, not only an oratorio, but a combination of all of that, which makes it difficult to program. Also, the text of Valéry can easily seem pretentious and passé. Finally, Honegger isn't recognized as a composer of the same stature as Debussy or Stravinsky, so their Martyrdom and Persephone get occasional performances and recordings, not Amphion. And why isn't "Prelude Fugue and Postlude" more recognized, and played and recorded more often? Answer: I don't know. It is the fate of many of those tone poems of Honegger, overshadowed by Pacific 231, Rugby and Pastorale d'été: Monopartita, Mouvement symphonique No. 3, the Prelude for The Tempest, Chant de Nigamon, Nocturne... they are all great pieces. Soon after his death Honegger brutally fell out of fashion. Maybe it is because his music remains often too brutal and dissonant for the "lay" listener, but too "popular", aiming too much at the simple and basic emotions, for the high-brows. To an extent, in the context of the late 1950s to early 1980s, when Boulez and the avant-garde were dominant (especially in France), I can understand it. But now? That Shostakovich, whose compositional stance if fairly similar, should enjoy such an immense popularity, and not Honegger, remains a riddle to me.

The disc would be worth it even with the 37 minutes of Amphion alone. The 31 minutes of the orchestral suite from L'Impératrice aux rochers, Rubinstein's first commission to Honegger, is an invaluable bonus then. It was Honegger's main compositional effort for the year 1925, the incidental music for a Mystery play on a book by a Saint George de Bouhélier. As Halbreich points out, the story closely resembles the Hebbel story that inspired Schumann's Genovena. The play was premiered in 1927, with no success. The original score was one of the largest of Honegger, 65 minutes of music with soprano solo and chorus, in 26 short and independent tableaux. Honegger excerpted a concert suite in five movements, and Halbreich salvaged five more from the original score so that the best of the music would be represented. Because of its piecemeal nature it isn't as cogent and significant as Amphion, but it contains much that is entirely typical of the composer, from the evocative and lovely to the somber and brassy-snarling-ominous, offering a great addition to one's knowledge and collection of his music.

Text and translations of Amphion provided, bravo Timpani. This is one of the great Honegger discs of all times, not one the occasional listener should start with - go instead to the symphonies and more famous symphonic poems - but an indispensable one anybody seriously interested in the composer.


title: invaluable Honegger rarities

text:
Honegger was mainly an orchestral composer - he does have a catalog of piano pieces, which nicely fills one CD, of songs and chamber works, from solo violin sonata to three string quartets, but they are not the most essential and significant part of his oeuvre, and, by his great biographer Harry Halbreich's admission, past 1923 (which is early in Honegger's compositional career), "chamber music occupies only a marginal place in his output, and his last years are entirely devoid of it".

His orchestral output seems a well-know quantity: five symphonies, a number of symphonic poems (among which Pacific 231, Rugby, Mouvement symphonique No. 3 and Pastorale d'été are the most famous, but there are a number of others and highly valuable ones), the great oratorios (from King David to A Christmas Cantata), operas and operettas. Honegger was also a prolific film composer, and the CD era has seen the publication, mainly through the ministry of Swiss conductor Adriano and Naxos, of many symphonic suites derived from them.

But reading Halbreich's biography and its year-by-year accounts ([[ASIN:1574670417 Arthur Honegger]]), the abundance of Honegger's compositional activities is breathtaking, and they yielded many works that are today entirely forgotten, many of which never even published, and some even lost. It seems close to unthinkable that a composer should be so casual about what comes out of his pen that he wouldn't carefully keep a copy in his archive, even with no immediate prospect of being published, but then, we also tend to forget that copying wasn't so easy before invention of the Xerox machine. It is mainly in the realm of ballet that Honegger's works are forgotten. Halbreich lists 19 of them. They disappeared not so much because the music would have been inferior Honegger, but because, for various and extra-musical reasons, they didn't meet any success when they were premiered. Of those 19, Halbreich mentions that the scores of three are lost, and three more retained only in fragmentary form. The only ones to have some currency on disc are "Le Dit des Jeux du Monde", one of Honegger's earliest compositions (1918) and the one that established him as a major young composer on the French scene, and "Horace victorieux" from 1921 (because, from the start, it had a career as a concert piece). "Skating Rink", Honegger's fourth ballet, from 1922, has also been recorded ([[ASIN:B000004A3T Skating Rink Choreographic Symphony L'idee]]).

This CD, together with its companions on Timpani, with more of these forgotten ballets ([[ASIN:B000001YNH Honegger: Amphion / L'Imperatrice aux Rochers]] and [[ASIN:B00003NHC0 Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde  / Cto Da Camera]]), was masterminded by Halbreich, and eternal gratitude to him. It gathers premiere recordings of pieces that were salvaged from oblivion thanks to Halbreich's cataloging work made for the publisher Salabert. The main dish is the Ballet-Pantomime Semiramis, fifth commission from Honegger by patroness, dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein, Amphion being the fourth written like Semiramis on a book by French writer Paul Valéry, and Paul Claudel's Joan at the Stake the sixth and last. The first three were the incidental music to L'Impératrice aux rochers and to D'Annunzio's Phaedre (recorded by Rozhdestvenksy, [[ASIN:B0002I692I A.Honegger - Symphony No.2, Phedre: Suite for the Tragedy by d'Annunzio, Three extracts from film 'Napoleon']]), and Les Noces d'Amour et de Psyche, a ballet made of an orchestration of various English and French Suites of Bach. Semiramis flopped on its premiere at the Paris Opera on 11 May 1934, one of the reasons being that Valéry had inserted, near the end, a long, 15-minute monologue with no music, in which (based on the testimony of Hermann Scherchen, recounted by Halbreich in his biography), Rubinstein "meowed interminably , always on the same lachrymose and monotonous tone". The score was never published and Honegger's widow even banned any performance during her lifetime, who knows why. The first modern revival took place in November 1992, immediately after this recording (which seamlessly cuts out the monologue, although its text is provided in the booklet). Running nearly 39 minutes, it is great Honegger. The instrumentation is very original, heavily based on woodwinds, brass and percussion (which can bring to mind some pieces of Stravinsky, like his Symphony for Winds) and with apparently the first use ever of the Ondes Martenot (and two of them) in an orchestral piece. There is also a chorus and soprano, but they sing only occasionally. The musical result is stark, often aggressively pounding and "tonally dissonant" as Honegger often was (at least for ears untrained to Bartok, Varèse or Schoenberg), often very lyrical in Honegger's unmistakable type of lyricism, always ear-catching and intriguing. The great and imposing quasi-funeral march on track 9 is entirely the sonic universe of Symphonie Liturgique or the Fifth Symphony.

The rest are fascinating scraps, like the short Largo for strings that Honegger initially composed when responding to the commission of wealthy patron and conductor Paul Sacher that ultimately yielded the Second Symphony, but then discarded, or excerpts from the incidental music to Shakespeare's Tempest, of which only the extraordinary powerful and violent Overture from 1923 had been hitherto known and recorded (and the rest, which was composed off and on until 1929, for a production delayed many times, isn't as powerful and striking, but it is always agreeable and has a few catching orchestral moments). Some of the early pieces, like the interlude for the uncompleted chamber opera "The Death of Saint Anthelme" that Honegger briefly worked on in 1918 before the project was abandoned for lack of funding, are surprisingly romantic (Halbreich hears Debussy in them, but if so it is the early Debussy of Damoiselle Elue), and the ensuing Vivace, which Halbreich tentatively ascribes also to 1918, sounds almost like Tchaikovsky, but peppered with the light-hearted and cheerful spirit of Les Six. It is entirely the spirit of Les Six that is at play in Fantasio (tracks 14-16), a "Skit in Three Pictures" (rather than "Sketch in three scenes" as the translation has it) composed in 1922 for a famous mime, and apparently never performed. It could have been written by Sauguet (not a member of Les Six) or Auric. Interesting to note: of course Honegger was a member of Les Six, but that was more by dint of journalist Henri Collet's famous article in Comoedia and Cocteau's ensuing publicity stunts, Honegger never followed the Cocteau-ish party-line, never professing a great admiration for Satie but always an admirer of Debussy and Wagner, and his music was always more beefy and dramatic than the typical Les Six fluff. Only in the 1924 Piano Concertino and 1930 Cello Concerto did he really show off his lighter side, which culminated in his operettas. But the scraps gathered by Timpani reveal that it was there before. The two short orchestral pieces on tracks 22 and 23 are excerpted from a radio play that Honegger composed near the end of his life, in 1951, and are among the last he composed. Despite the crippling heart-attack that had struck him in 1947 and that would ultimately claim his life in 1955, it shows a composer of undiminished powers, but also one whose "serious" music and film music cannot be dissociated. Although his compositional processes could be very elaborate, Honegger always aimed for the big effect and the basic emotions. Much of his "serious" music sounds like (superior) film music, which is probably what accounts for Honegger's lack of popularity today: too dissonant for the lay listener, too popular and smacking of film for the high-brow amateur or critic.

Not a disc for the casual and occasional Honegger listener - he should go first to the symphonies and symphonic poems - but, with its two Timpani companions, an indispensable one for the Honeggerite. Liner notes by Halbreich, TT 78 minutes, you can't ask for more.

Check the disc's other entries for price, [[ASIN:B0000285FB Semiramis]] and [[ASIN:B0009N5L5W Honegger: Semiramis - Unpublished Orchestral Pieces]].


title: An invaluable program of Honegger rarities

text:
Honegger was mainly an orchestral composer - he does have a catalog of piano pieces, which nicely fills one CD, of songs and chamber works, from solo violin sonata to three string quartets, but they are not the most essential and significant part of his oeuvre, and, by his great biographer Harry Halbreich's admission, past 1923 (which is early in Honegger's compositional career), "chamber music occupies only a marginal place in his output, and his last years are entirely devoid of it".

His orchestral output seems a well-know quantity: five symphonies, a number of symphonic poems (among which Pacific 231, Rugby, Mouvement symphonique No. 3 and Pastorale d'été are the most famous, but there are a number of others and highly valuable ones), the great oratorios (from King David to A Christmas Cantata), operas and operettas. Honegger was also a prolific film composer, and the CD era has seen the publication, mainly through the ministry of Swiss conductor Adriano and Naxos, of many symphonic suites derived from them.

But reading Halbreich's biography and its year-by-year accounts ([[ASIN:1574670417 Arthur Honegger]]), the abundance of Honegger's compositional activities is breathtaking, and they yielded many works that are today entirely forgotten, many of which never even published, and some even lost. It seems close to unthinkable that a composer should be so casual about what comes out of his pen that he wouldn't carefully keep a copy in his archive, even with no immediate prospect of being published, but then, we also tend to forget that copying wasn't so easy before invention of the Xerox machine. It is mainly in the realm of ballet that Honegger's works are forgotten. Halbreich lists 19 of them. They disappeared not so much because the music would have been inferior Honegger, but because, for various and extra-musical reasons, they didn't meet any success when they were premiered. Of those 19, Halbreich mentions that the scores of three are lost, and three more retained only in fragmentary form. The only ones to have some currency on disc are "Le Dit des Jeux du Monde", one of Honegger's earliest compositions (1918) and the one that established him as a major young composer on the French scene, and "Horace victorieux" from 1921 (because, from the start, it had a career as a concert piece). "Skating Rink", Honegger's fourth ballet, from 1922, has also been recorded ([[ASIN:B000004A3T Skating Rink Choreographic Symphony L'idee]]).

This CD, together with its companions on Timpani, with more of these forgotten ballets ([[ASIN:B000001YNH Honegger: Amphion / L'Imperatrice aux Rochers]] and [[ASIN:B00003NHC0 Le Dit Des Jeux Du Monde  / Cto Da Camera]]), was masterminded by Halbreich, and eternal gratitude to him. It gathers premiere recordings of pieces that were salvaged from oblivion thanks to Halbreich's cataloging work made for the publisher Salabert. The main dish is the Ballet-Pantomime Semiramis, fifth commission from Honegger by patroness, dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein, Amphion being the fourth written like Semiramis on a book by French writer Paul Valéry, and Paul Claudel's Joan at the Stake the sixth and last. The first three were the incidental music to L'Impératrice aux rochers and to D'Annunzio's Phaedre (recorded by Rozhdestvenksy, [[ASIN:B0002I692I A.Honegger - Symphony No.2, Phedre: Suite for the Tragedy by d'Annunzio, Three extracts from film 'Napoleon']]), and Les Noces d'Amour et de Psyche, a ballet made of an orchestration of various English and French Suites of Bach. Semiramis flopped on its premiere at the Paris Opera on 11 May 1934, one of the reasons being that Valéry had inserted, near the end, a long, 15-minute monologue with no music, in which (based on the testimony of Hermann Scherchen, recounted by Halbreich in his biography), Rubinstein "meowed interminably , always on the same lachrymose and monotonous tone". The score was never published and Honegger's widow even banned any performance during her lifetime, who knows why. The first modern revival took place in November 1992, immediately after this recording (which seamlessly cuts out the monologue, although its text is provided in the booklet). Running nearly 39 minutes, it is great Honegger. The instrumentation is very original, heavily based on woodwinds, brass and percussion (which can bring to mind some pieces of Stravinsky, like his Symphony for Winds) and with apparently the first use ever of the Ondes Martenot (and two of them) in an orchestral piece. There is also a chorus and soprano, but they sing only occasionally. The musical result is stark, often aggressively pounding and "tonally dissonant" as Honegger often was (at least for ears untrained to Bartok, Varèse or Schoenberg), often very lyrical in Honegger's unmistakable type of lyricism, always ear-catching and intriguing. The great and imposing quasi-funeral march on track 9 is entirely the sonic universe of Symphonie Liturgique or the Fifth Symphony.

The rest are fascinating scraps, like the short Largo for strings that Honegger initially composed when responding to the commission of wealthy patron and conductor Paul Sacher that ultimately yielded the Second Symphony, but then discarded, or excerpts from the incidental music to Shakespeare's Tempest, of which only the extraordinary powerful and violent Overture from 1923 had been hitherto known and recorded (and the rest, which was composed off and on until 1929, for a production delayed many times, isn't as powerful and striking, but it is always agreeable and has a few catching orchestral moments). Some of the early pieces, like the interlude for the uncompleted chamber opera "The Death of Saint Anthelme" that Honegger briefly worked on in 1918 before the project was abandoned for lack of funding, are surprisingly romantic (Halbreich hears Debussy in them, but if so it is the early Debussy of Damoiselle Elue), and the ensuing Vivace, which Halbreich tentatively ascribes also to 1918, sounds almost like Tchaikovsky, but peppered with the light-hearted and cheerful spirit of Les Six. It is entirely the spirit of Les Six that is at play in Fantasio (tracks 14-16), a "Skit in Three Pictures" (rather than "Sketch in three scenes" as the translation has it) composed in 1922 for a famous mime, and apparently never performed. It could have been written by Sauguet (not a member of Les Six) or Auric. Interesting to note: of course Honegger was a member of Les Six, but that was more by dint of journalist Henri Collet's famous article in Comoedia and Cocteau's ensuing publicity stunts, Honegger never followed the Cocteau-ish party-line, never professing a great admiration for Satie but always an admirer of Debussy and Wagner, and his music was always more beefy and dramatic than the typical Les Six fluff. Only in the 1924 Piano Concertino and 1930 Cello Concerto did he really show off his lighter side, which culminated in his operettas. But the scraps gathered by Timpani reveal that it was there before. The two short orchestral pieces on tracks 22 and 23 are excerpted from a radio play that Honegger composed near the end of his life, in 1951, and are among the last he composed. Despite the crippling heart-attack that had struck him in 1947 and that would ultimately claim his life in 1955, it shows a composer of undiminished powers, but also one whose "serious" music and film music cannot be dissociated. Although his compositional processes could be very elaborate, Honegger always aimed for the big effect and the basic emotions. Much of his "serious" music sounds like (superior) film music, which is probably what accounts for Honegger's lack of popularity today: too dissonant for the lay listener, too popular and smacking of film for the high-brow amateur or critic.

Not a disc for the casual and occasional Honegger listener - he should go first to the symphonies and symphonic poems - but, with its two Timpani companions, an indispensable one for the Honeggerite. Liner notes by Halbreich, TT 78 minutes, you can't ask for more.


title: A valuable program (missing Mouvement Symphonique No. 3) in interpretations somewhat too smooth for the music's aggressiveness

text:
Michel Plasson recorded the complete Symphonies of Honegger at the end of the 1970s for EMI but, as a filler, that set included only Pacific 231 ([[ASIN:B0000CE7FR Honegger: Symphonies #1-5, Pacific 231; Michel Plasson; Orchestre du Capitole du Toulouse]]), so it is good to have this selection of symphonic poems, from 1991, as a belated complement. Here Plasson offers a mixture of the popular (Pastorale d'été, the inevitable Pacific 231 again and Rugby) and the less frequent, although all have been recorded a number of times, before or after. The one major regret is that Plasson and DG didn't include "Mouvement symphonique No. 3", the final pendant of the triptych whose first two were Pacific and Rugby. The disc's TT of 65 minutes would have permitted it.

Pastorale d'été, an early work from 1920, is one of Honegger's most atmospheric compositions and Plasson offers one of its most spacious and atmospheric readings. The sonic pickup that makes the orchestra sound somewhat distant but very silky is a factor contributing to the atmosphere - provided that you can turn up the volume to a really high volume. In a similar approach Fabio Luisi offers more orchestral presence and vividness, but his Pastorale can be found only in his complete traversal of the symphonies, which has its highs and its lows (one of those being the ludicrous price now demanded for it on the marketplace, [[ASIN:B00005MJX0 Arthur Honegger: Symphonies (Complete); Mouvements Symphoniques (Complete) (2 CD) (Casavelle)]]). Plasson's Pacific is also very satisfactory, marginally better than his previous essay because of its added drive, and short of the best (and the best by far is Bernstein in 1962, [[ASIN:B0000029PD Milhaud: Les Choephores / Roussel: Symphony No. 3 / Honegger: Rugby - Pacific 231]]) because of still a touch of lack of sufficient drive, and also because it is a little too polished and lacks a touch of raw power - a Pacific 231 at full throttle should be brutal, not comfortable: after all, you are riding in the steam locomotive, not the 1st Class coach. The same shortcomings, sonics too smooth and a certain lack of dynamic propulsion, mar this Rugby match - the Colombes stadium where Honegger fancied the match took place is not (still today) your deluxe facility with wide screen, but one where the field is easily turned into trenches by the players' shoe-studs - , making it an OK version, one that you can live with but not a great one. The great ones are by Scherchen in 1954 ([[ASIN:B00005RIH5 Honegger: Pacific 231/ Stravinsky: Petrouchka]]) and Bernstein in 1962.

The rest are welcome rarities. The two suites from Mermoz (the French pioneer airmail pilot and colleague of Saint Exupery, disappeared in flight in 1937) are excerpted from the film score that Honegger composed in 1942 for the film of Louis Cuny and they are not just "Gerbrauchsmusik", utility-music, but great Honegger, harking back to the composer's most dissonant style featured in the early symphonic poems Le Chant de Nigamon, Horace victorieux or the First Symphony from 1930. But it also presents moments of great orchestral lushness (hard not to think of Ravel's Second Suite from Daphnis at the beginning of Suite No. 2, "The Crossing of the Atlantic"). In the first Suite, "Over the Andes", compared to the version recorded by Adriano on Marco Polo ([[ASIN:B0044Z55BQ Honegger: Film Music (Les Miserables/Mermoz/Napoleon)]]), Plasson is more lush, Adriano more vehement and dramatic, Plasson describes beautiful vistas flying over the Andes, Adriano depicts danger. In both suites Adriano's Bratislava orchestra may sound more rough-hewn and less atmospheric than Plasson's Toulouse Capitole, but the conductor and sonics bring out more details of the orchestration (although Plasson has a prominent piano at the beginning of the 2nd Suite which I do not hear at all with Adriano). But Plasson's 2nd Suite is much preferable, with greater urgency and bite in the dramatic climaxes, and more sweep at the end when the sun triumphantly and blazingly bursts in through the storm-filled clouds (and you don't need to read the liner notes or watch the film to know what's going on). That said, neither Plasson nor Adriano come near the intensity, bite and pungency of George Tzipine in 1956, despite the mono sonics ([[ASIN:B00000DOCI Le Film Francais]]).

It was a good idea to pair the two Mermoz-suites with the Prelude for Shakespeare's Tempest (1923), since, despite the twenty years between them, they share many stylistic traits. There too Honegger wrote very impressive (and quite descriptive) storm music, and (although it is here a storm upon the sea) it would be easy to fancy that Mermoz was caught in it. Plasson's recording is impressive and certainly so in terms of making a racket (great brass work), but part of it has to do with the music more than the interpretation. You just need to compare back to back with Scherchen's 1954 recording (see link above) to realize what a truly furious storm is, one that Mermoz would have been a true hero to survive, compared to a sluggish and cozy one that he could have surfed over on a paraglider for recreation (slight exaggeration). But to give him credit, Plasson leads it here at the same tempo as Honegger himself in his own recording from 1930 ([[ASIN:B000006KFY La Tempete / Pacific 231 / Rugby]]).

Although subtitled "Symphonie mimée", Horace Victorieux, completed in 1921 after the Roman legend recounted by Livy and adapted by Corneille in one of his most famous plays, was in fact conceived as a ballet, although it was premiered (by Ansermet) as a symphonic poem. "Mimed" symphony then in that the music very graphically depicts the situations, climaxing in the combat between the three Horace and three Curiace brothers and the concluding murder of Camille by her brother, the victorious Horace, where the massive orchestral blows irresistibly recall the murder of Aegisth in Strauss' Elektra. "Horace victorieux" is typical of the raw, aggressive, dissonant Honegger of the 1920s and early 1930s, from the Tempest-Prelude to the First Symphony and Mouvement Symphonique No. 3, and it flirts even with the expressive and tortured lyrical atonalism of the New Viennese School, especially Berg. It is a great piece (for listeners for whom Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, Varèse's Amériques or Stravinsky's Rite don't seem too aggressive). Plasson develops fine atmospheres in the atmospheric moments, like the "très lent", very slow section that opens immediately after the introduction, at 0:11, depicting "Camille and Curiace", although I would have liked for the harp's punctuation in harmonics at the beginning or the solo viola at 0:51 to come out more clearly and prominently. But, when compared to the slightly more flowing pacing of the premiere recording of Michel Tabachnik (from circa 1973 with Orchestre National de France for the label Barclays/Inédits de l'ORTF, not reissued on CD), under Plasson the movement appears a bit placid and comes somewhat at the expense of the music's underlying tension and passion (the movement depicts the love of Camille of the Horace family and Curiace, a kind of Romeo and Juliet situation). Plasson is also not always quite aggressive and hard-driven enough in the aggressive and hard-driven moments. Just at the top, it is easy to imagine how much more breathlessly urgent the 10"-long, brassy fanfare introduction could be (and is under Tabachnik). Likewise his trudging "Entrance of the Horaces" ("Rhythmic" is Honegger's character indication there), at 6:21, taken easily 10 beats under Honegger's metronome mark, may sound ominous and powerful, but it also makes the Horaces sound like a vaguely ridiculous army of Orcs encumbered by unwieldy armors; at a similar tempo, Thierry Fischer has his strings articulate with much more bite ([[ASIN:B001F4YGYG Une Cantate De Noel Horace Victorieux]]). But there is fine urgency in the (very) hushed scurrying celli at 8:28, plenty of bite in the "Preparation to the combat" at 10:00, and the combat proper, starting at 12:57, develops plenty of intensity, if not quite the trenchant of Fischer's (to say nothing of the raging fury of Tabachnik). The murder of Camille, at 19:01, is suitably violent and pounding - girls, why do you always have to complain?

"Mimed symphony", but DG's stingy single cue won't let you fully enjoy the film. Plasson's two CD competitors, Fischer on Hyperion and Sacher on Pan ([[ASIN:B00008FIIL Symphony 3]]), give you one cue per movement. Anyway, I'll try to make up for DG's laziness by giving the different episodes:

Overture
Camille and Horace 0:11
Entrance of the Horaces 6:21
Entrance of the crowd preceding the heroes 8:28
Heralding and preparations for the combat 9:34
The combat 12:57
Triumph of Horace 15:51
Lament and imprecations of Camille 17:01
Murder of Camille 18:47

There isn't yet an ideal version of Horace victorieux, all three versions available on CD (and the one of Tabachnik) have their shortcomings. All my reservations about Plasson's interpretations are comparative only. You may find better recordings of the individual pieces, but as it is, the recital offers many rewards and will give plenty of satisfaction.

Check on the disc's other entry for a possible cheaper price, [[ASIN:B00000E535 Pacific 231 / Horace Victorieux]].


title: interpretively superseded by much from before and after

text:
Unlike Ernest Ansermet, Charles Munch, Georges Tzipine or even Louis Fourestier, Jean Martinon isn't a conductor associated with Honegger. Other than a recording of the short "Pastorale d'été", made with Orchestre Lamoureux for Philips in the early 1950s, I am not aware that he recorded any other Honegger than this 1971 program with Orchestre National. And if he programed any during his tenure with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it hasn't yet been made public on disc.

He offers a good Christmas Cantata, with a few shortcomings however that prevent it from being on a par with the greater ones, Ansermet's from 10 years earlier ([[ASIN:B0075480RY Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 & 4 / Martin: In terra pax]]) , Michel Corboz in 1989 ([[ASIN:B000009IYJ Arthur Honegger - Christmas Cantata/Une Cantate De Noel, Dance of Death/La Danse des morts (Erato)]]) and those of Martin Neary (1987, I can't find a listing of the original issue, it's been reissued on [[ASIN:B00068V3CK Berlioz: L'enfance Du Christ / Honegger: Christmas Cantata / Poulenc: Four Motets]]) and Thierry Fischer (2007, [[ASIN:B001F4YGYG Une Cantate De Noel Horace Victorieux]]). Martinon has the advantage of soncis that allow for many orchestral details finally to come through, that were covered by the chorus in Ansermet's 1961 recording as well as in Baudo's from 1966 ([[ASIN:B00000JMZ3 Honegger - Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher · A Christmas Cantata / Baudo]]), and still are to an extent in Corboz' recording. But it is a trade-off: on the other hand there are spots where Martinon's sopranos don't come out enough, and the passage starting at 11:29 is very typical: the slightly mischievous oboes come out felicitously (they are hardly audible with Ansermet, and totally inaudible with Baudo and Corboz), but the sopranos' florid melisma on the words "gloria in excelsis deo" is hardly audible. Ideally you'd get both, of course, and if you really have to choose, it is better to have the sopranos. In the jubilant "laudate dominum omnes gentes" chorus starting at 18:44, Ansermet's chorus has much more presence and impact (and Ansermet's pacing is wonderfully energetic and jubilant), and in general in Martinon's sonics the clarity of instrumental details is obtained thanks to a more recessed, less powerful-sounding chorus. But above all that, Ansermet has the advantage of baritone Pierre Mollet, more youtfhul sounding and tender than Camille Maurane. Maurane is a great singer of course and as accomplished stylistically in "musique française" as Mollet, but 1971 is a bit late in his career (he was sixty by then), and while still remarkably sustained the voice is timbrally dryer. Corboz' Gilles Cachemaille is also very fine, if not as movingly tender as Pierre Mollet. The anonymous solo child who sings the line "laudate dominum omnes gentes at 16:55 has only one bar to sing, but he is particularly touching (Ansermet has the line sung by the children's choir). Giving the Christmas Cantata only one cue was really stingy and lazy from EMI. The piece may be in one continuous movement, but it's easy to distinguish numerous different sections. But in truth, almost every recording does the same, and none do better than three cues (Ansermet, Jurowski).

The rest of Martinon's Honegger program is interpretively more disappointing. Seeing the drawing that Honegger scribbled at the top of his manuscript score (reproduced in the Eulenburg pocket score) or photos of Pacific 231 locomotives, you expect those machines to be heavyweight and slow to get moving but to be really zipping fast when running full speed - and you'd be absolutely right: I had always thought that a Pacific was a certain brand name, like Porsche or Boeing, and 231 the model number, like 911 or 747. Not at all, a search on Wikipedia shows that 231 is, in French classification, the generic name for all steam locomotives with four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle (in English classification, based on number of wheels rather than axles, 4 - 6 - 2s), and that 231s are also called Pacifics. And, explaining his piece (not so much an imitation of the sounds of the locomotive as a description in a musical construction of the impressions born from the physical experience), Honegger said that he had chosen for subject the Pacific, "symbol 231, for high-speed heavy train". But Martinon's Pacific is none of the above. Its textures are transparent - which is fine, since it lets you enjoy many details of Honegger's dense orchestration - but also lightweight and almost balletic, which may be interesting as "another view", but still, seems way out of character. And while slow to move, it never gathers much momentum. The timings tell: the composer recorded it in 1931 and completed his ride in 5:56 ([[ASIN:B000006KFY La Tempete / Pacific 231 / Rugby]]), Scherchen in 1956 took it in 6:21 ([[ASIN:B00005RIH5 Honegger: Pacific 231/ Stravinsky: Petrouchka]]), Bernstein in 1962 (then, and still today the best version, [[ASIN:B0000029PD Milhaud: Les Choephores / Roussel: Symphony No. 3 / Honegger: Rugby - Pacific 231]]) at 6:00. Martinon: 6:45. Don't take Martinon's train if you have an important appointment.

And his rugby match must have been the veterans' jubilee rather than the final playoff of the Five-Nations Championship. A comparison with Honegger's own recording, made in 1930, or with Piero Coppola's who made the recording premiere a year before, [[ASIN:B00000G2IQ Collection Piero Coppola, Vol. 3 - La Musique Française 20e Siècle: Roussel: Suite in F, Op. 33 (1926); La Naissance de la Lyre, Op. 24 (1924): Honnegger, Schmitt, Rabaud, (recorded 1928-30)]] - both take 7:10 -, or with Scherchen's in 1954 (7:03), or even with Bernstein in 1962 (7:21) is telling. Martinon trails at 7:55. That said, the 1971 sonics are stupendous, letting you hear all the details of Honegger's orchestra, and with a touch of glare especially on the brass that is perfectly appropriate.

One thing you can say in favor of Martinon's Pastorale d'été, other than, again, its great sonics (to the point of spotlighting somewhat artificially the solo flute and clarinet), is how close it is, in its choices of tempi, to the composer's own recording from 1930 - e.g. relatively pressing, never letting you loose the underlying sense of a 1-2-3-4 beat from the underpinning cellos, and ultimately strong on joy and brilliance (especially in the central section "vif et gai" starting at 3:00, which Martinon animates even more than Honegger) but a little short on atmosphere.

Even in the LP era the rarer "Mouvement symphonique No. 3" (the third pendant of the triptych also represented by Pacific 231 and Rugby) could have fit on the LP. For a CD, the TT of less than 47 minutes is stingy, adding a factor to the, ultimately, lack of true appeal today of this CD. Better versions of all those pieces can be found elsewhere. If you still want to go along with Martinon, you'll find the disc cheaper under its other entries, Western issues (for instance the original French CD issue, [[ASIN:B000006DE0 Honegger Pacific 231, Rugby, and Etc.]]). This one is really for those who wouldn't be happy with less than 24 bits, and ready to pay the price for each one.


title: Interpretively superseded by much from before and after

text:
Unlike Ernest Ansermet, Charles Munch, Georges Tzipine or even Louis Fourestier, Jean Martinon isn't a conductor associated with Honegger. Other than a recording of the short "Pastorale d'été", made with Orchestre Lamoureux for Philips in the early 1950s, I am not aware that he recorded any other Honegger than this 1971 program with Orchestre National. And if he programed any during his tenure with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it hasn't yet been made public on disc.

He offers a good Christmas Cantata, with a few shortcomings however that prevent it from being on a par with the greater ones, Ansermet's from 10 years earlier ([[ASIN:B0075480RY Honegger: Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 & 4 / Martin: In terra pax]]) , Michel Corboz in 1989 ([[ASIN:B000009IYJ Arthur Honegger - Christmas Cantata/Une Cantate De Noel, Dance of Death/La Danse des morts (Erato)]]) and those of Martin Neary (1987, I can't find a listing of the original issue, it's been reissued on [[ASIN:B00068V3CK Berlioz: L'enfance Du Christ / Honegger: Christmas Cantata / Poulenc: Four Motets]]) and Thierry Fischer (2007, [[ASIN:B001F4YGYG Une Cantate De Noel Horace Victorieux]]). Martinon has the advantage of soncis that allow for many orchestral details finally to come through, that were covered by the chorus in Ansermet's 1961 recording as well as in Baudo's from 1966 ([[ASIN:B00000JMZ3 Honegger - Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher · A Christmas Cantata / Baudo]]), and still are to an extent in Corboz' recording. But it is a trade-off: on the other hand there are spots where Martinon's sopranos don't come out enough, and the passage starting at 11:29 is very typical: the slightly mischievous oboes come out felicitously (they are hardly audible with Ansermet, and totally inaudible with Baudo and Corboz), but the sopranos' florid melisma on the words "gloria in excelsis deo" is hardly audible. Ideally you'd get both, of course, and if you really have to choose, it is better to have the sopranos. In the jubilant "laudate dominum omnes gentes" chorus starting at 18:44, Ansermet's chorus has much more presence and impact (and Ansermet's pacing is wonderfully energetic and jubilant), and in general in Martinon's sonics the clarity of instrumental details is obtained thanks to a more recessed, less powerful-sounding chorus. But above all that, Ansermet has the advantage of baritone Pierre Mollet, more youtfhul sounding and tender than Camille Maurane. Maurane is a great singer of course and as accomplished stylistically in "musique française" as Mollet, but 1971 is a bit late in his career (he was sixty by then), and while still remarkably sustained the voice is timbrally dryer. Corboz' Gilles Cachemaille is also very fine, if not as movingly tender as Pierre Mollet. The anonymous solo child who sings the line "laudate dominum omnes gentes at 16:55 has only one bar to sing, but he is particularly touching (Ansermet has the line sung by the children's choir). Giving the Christmas Cantata only one cue was really stingy and lazy from EMI. The piece may be in one continuous movement, but it's easy to distinguish numerous different sections. But in truth, almost every recording does the same, and none do better than three cues (Ansermet, Jurowski).

The rest of Martinon's Honegger program is interpretively more disappointing. Seeing the drawing that Honegger scribbled at the top of his manuscript score (reproduced in the Eulenburg pocket score) or photos of Pacific 231 locomotives, you expect those machines to be heavyweight and slow to get moving but to be really zipping fast when running full speed - and you'd be absolutely right: I had always thought that a Pacific was a certain brand name, like Porsche or Boeing, and 231 the model number, like 911 or 747. Not at all, a search on Wikipedia shows that 231 is, in French classification, the generic name for all steam locomotives with four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle (in English classification, based on number of wheels rather than axles, 4 - 6 - 2s), and that 231s are also called Pacifics. And, explaining his piece (not so much an imitation of the sounds of the locomotive as a description in a musical construction of the impressions born from the physical experience), Honegger said that he had chosen for subject the Pacific, "symbol 231, for high-speed heavy train". But Martinon's Pacific is none of the above. Its textures are transparent - which is fine, since it lets you enjoy many details of Honegger's dense orchestration - but also lightweight and almost balletic, which may be interesting as "another view", but still, seems way out of character. And while slow to move, it never gathers much momentum. The timings tell: the composer recorded it in 1931 and completed his ride in 5:56 ([[ASIN:B000006KFY La Tempete / Pacific 231 / Rugby]]), Scherchen in 1956 took it in 6:21 ([[ASIN:B00005RIH5 Honegger: Pacific 231/ Stravinsky: Petrouchka]]), Bernstein in 1962 (then, and still today the best version, [[ASIN:B0000029PD Milhaud: Les Choephores / Roussel: Symphony No. 3 / Honegger: Rugby - Pacific 231]]) at 6:00. Martinon: 6:45. Don't take Martinon's train if you have an important appointment.

And his rugby match must have been the veterans' jubilee rather than the final playoff of the Five-Nations Championship. A comparison with Honegger's own recording, made in 1930, or with Piero Coppola's who made the recording premiere a year before, [[ASIN:B00000G2IQ Collection Piero Coppola, Vol. 3 - La Musique Française 20e Siècle: Roussel: Suite in F, Op. 33 (1926); La Naissance de la Lyre, Op. 24 (1924): Honnegger, Schmitt, Rabaud, (recorded 1928-30)]] - both take 7:10 -, or with Scherchen's in 1954 (7:03), or even with Bernstein in 1962 (7:21) is telling. Martinon trails at 7:55. That said, the 1971 sonics are stupendous, letting you hear all the details of Honegger's orchestra, and with a touch of glare especially on the brass that is perfectly appropriate.

One thing you can say in favor of Martinon's Pastorale d'été, other than, again, its great sonics (to the point of spotlighting somewhat artificially the solo flute and clarinet), is how close it is, in its choices of tempi, to the composer's own recording from 1930 - e.g. relatively pressing, never letting you loose the underlying sense of a 1-2-3-4 beat from the underpinning cellos, and ultimately strong on joy and brilliance (especially in the central section "vif et gai" starting at 3:00, which Martinon animates even more than Honegger) but a little short on atmosphere.

Even in the LP era the rarer "Mouvement symphonique No. 3" (the third pendant of the triptych also represented by Pacific 231 and Rugby) could have fit on the LP. For a CD, the TT of less than 47 minutes is stingy, adding a factor to the, ultimately, lack of true appeal today of this CD. Better versions of all those pieces can be found elsewhere.


title: Memories of a great violinist

text:
This recital turned out to be what I feared it might be.

I am not even close to knowledgeable in matters of violin technique, so I wonder what happens to a major fiddler for his tonal production one day to start deteriorating and become sour, and his digital fleetness to appear hampered. It has happened to Menuhin, and it has happened to Szigeti, in the late 1950s and early 1960s (he was beset by arthritis in his later days). Is it the bowing arm that stiffens? Is it the left-hand fingers that loose some nimbleness? Or a combination of both? Anyway, as I expected, such a deterioration mars this recital by Joseph Szigeti of 20th Century compositions reissued by Japanese Philips, and it is all the more regrettable, as if it hadn't been for that not minor drawback it would have been a great disc: the program is, I find, exceptionally interesting, and Szigeti's musical values, where they are not hampered by his technical difficulties, are outstanding.

The CD collates the partial contents of various Mercury LPs: SR 90442 had Debussy, Honegger and Webern along with Ives' Fourth Sonata, which unfortunately had to be left out (the disc is 76+ minutes long). SR 90419 had Stravinsky's Duo Concertant on the flip side of Prokofiev's 1st Violin Concerto conducted by Herbert Menges (now reissued in the same series with the two Violin Sonatas with Arthur Balsam). The only traces I could find of an LP release of Bartok's 2nd Violin Sonata were in Japan, on a Philips 3-LP set "Joseph Szigeti In Memoriam vol. 2", SFL-9681/83, collating all the above mentioned Mercury recordings, and an individual LP released in 1979, 13PC-95 with Bartok-Ives-Debussy-Honegger. Although the program was recorded in March 1959, the original LPs were made available in the US only as late as 1965-66, and they were not listed anymore in the Schwann catalog from July 1970.

I find it highly laudable of Szigeti (1892-1973) to tackle such a repertoire. Bartok and Debussy are expected turf for him - he was a close associate to Bartok and made a historical recording of both pieces with the Hungarian composer at the piano, live at the Library of Concert in 1940 ([[ASIN:B0002XL21G Sonata Recital By Joseph Szigeti & Bela Bartok]]), and another one of Debussy's Sonata with Andor Foldes in 1948 ([[ASIN:B000009K2K American Columbia Recordings]]). He also made a recording of the same Duo Concertant with Stravinsky at the piano in 1945 ([[ASIN:B0000V1AOE Joseph Szigeti Performs Prokofiev & Stravinsky]]). But Honegger and the elusive and terse Webern were, then and still now, rare stuff indeed. Of violinists of the same generation, who was as daring? Louis Krasner (commissioner of Berg's Violin Concerto and performer of Schoenberg's), Zoltan Szekely (creator of Bartok's Violin Concerto) were ten years younger. Rudolf Kolisch maybe (Schoenberg's brother-in-law, born four years after Szigeti), mainly in his capacity as string quartet leader (premieres of Quartets by Berg, Webern, Schoenberg and Bartok), and that is about it. Not Kochanski (despite his association with Szymanowski, not Albert Spalding, not Efrem Zimbalist, not Adolf Busch, not Mischa Elman (all born between 1887 and 1896).

As for the interpretation, then, I'll focus on what I know best, having the scores and having done extended comparative listening: Debussy and Bartok. Take Debussy's Sonata. It is remarkable for its precision, close adherence to the score and expressive character, and Szigeti receives admirable support from Roy Bogas, who, for once, is NOT confined by the sonics to the accompanist's back seat. But not so felicitous are the nasal tone (not helped by a close and dry recording), the harmonics that stick rather than whistle, and some awkward moments where you feel that Szigeti is doing not what he wants, but what he can. Detailing would be tedious, but they are moments of sloppy articulation and/or excessive caution, in which Szigeti sounds like a none too advanced nor gifted student. And one wonders if the tempos, significantly broader than those adopted with Bartok at the piano 19 years before (and those suggested by Debussy's metronome marks), as well as the relative lack of mischievous snap and tension in the second movement, are not due, in part, to the fiddler's caution in approaching the Sonata's technical difficulties.

Szigeti's tonal difficulties aren't so detrimental in Bartok's Sonata: it can take a few raucous utterances, which even bring much character at times, such as the pizzicati at the beginning of the second movement or the "battuto, ruvido" (beaten, rough) that immediately follows (0:45). Again Szigeti and Bogas are laudable for their relative rhythmic precision - a feature rare enough in that work, even from major violinists, to make it worth mentioning -, and they establish a nice mood at the outset, brooding, plangent and mysterious, full of pent-up menace. The problem is that the menace remains, so to speak, pent-up, and never erupts: they never really animate the discourse and remain very cautious in the climaxes, where you'd wish for more dramatic tension. Granted, at many of these key points the option may seem borne out by Bartok's indications. Oftentimes, when you feel that Szigeti is being too lazy, you'll see an "Allarg," "rallent." "ritard.", "maestoso", "meno mosso". But it comes from the fact that in the previous "piu mosso" or "vivo" or the likes, Szigeti remained very pedestrian. With Bartok at the piano he took all these moments faster and with more tension. The overall timings are telling: Szigeti now spends nearly a minute longer on the first movement than his former self (8:42 to 7:45) and more than 30 seconds on the second (12:32 to 11:54). He is also the slowest of all versions I have heard (except for Kremer's 1997 version, slower by a few seconds in the first movement). Given the cautious tempos, Roy Bogas' piano is a joy to hear: everything comes out clearly and precisely. It sounds like a textbook in Bartok piano playing - just playing a little slower than normal so that no student will miss anything. "You got it? So now play it in tempo".

Still, the recital is endearing for the memories it offers of the great violinist Szigeti once had been.