This
satisfying music moves gradually from Franck and D'Indy
towards a new though hardly revolutionary impressionism.
Oldsters
will know Magnard's name from the Decca analogue recording
of the Third Symphony made by Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestre
de la Suisse Romande. It has since been reissued by Australian
Eloquence. During the 1970s the Toulouse Capitole and Michel
Plasson recorded all four works plus the
Chant Funèbre for
French Pathé-EMI. The Plassons have been reissued on three
CDs and in a single 3 CD set. Thomas Sanderling – son of
Kurt - also recorded the four symphonies for BIS (
review).
The
First
Symphony opens in densely decorated Franckian grandeur.
The second movement is ecclesiastical, deploying long
and distinguished musical lines and rising to a big Elgarian
treatment of the theme at 5:50. The third movement is
a boisterous presto. It is succeeded by a final impassioned
Brahmsian
molto allegro with exciting woodwind
contributions and explosive lightning-strike contributions
from the violins.
The
Second
Symphony opens with a lively
Ouverture. The
second movement,
Danses, is music-box-bright where
ideas dart and glisten. The third movement
Chant Varié is
Wagnerian. Its silvery strings lend real enchantment
although this is the one movement where meandering descends
into noodling and the attention may drift. The finale
is a movement marked
vif - a favoured marking
for Magnard - where the spirit of Bizet's
L’Arlésienne haunts
the pages. The piece ends in celebration and with startling
pre-echoes of Janáček's
Sinfonietta.
The
Introduction to the
Third Symphony is darkly choleric
like a cave of the darkest dreams. The atmosphere is strong
and the roof of the cave is decorated by the gentlest of
strings with glowing lights. The second
Danses (again
très
vif) sets off at an explosive
presto, scurrying
and businesslike. The third movement sags somewhat, suffering
from meandering. The finale is grandly life-enhancing,
flighty and emphatic. At 5:10 an echoing figure for the
strings counterpoints a gloomier idea on the brass – it’s
pure magic. The strings are often engaged in mysterious
scampering. This is redolent of Sibelius and after much
silky work for the sensitive violins the work ends with
Elgarian resolve.
The
Fourth
Symphony opens with warm winds blowing up from the
South like the Mistral or Föhn. The temperature is a
couple of degrees cooler than the Hadean winds of
Francesca
da Rimini. The
vif second movement is stirringly
colourful, strongly flavoured with the music of rural
France, Canteloube's Auvergne and even a hint of the
rustic Kodály. Here it becomes apparent that Ossonce
has split the violins, first and second, left and right
as Boult customarily did. It makes for an excellent musical
effect. I wish more conductors would do it. The
Chant
Varié is Rimskian with more echoing delicacy for
the violins and an evocation of the glistening grandeur
of a cathedral roof far above. The finale has a tendency
towards heavy molasses but it ends in the most pellucid
of textures with a calm unwinding return to the original
theme and an ineffable sense of journey's done and symphonic
satisfaction.
The
notes by composer Francis Pott are substantial and informative.
They are in English, French and German.
Ossonce,
the BBC Scottish and Hyperion sweep the board. The recordings
are modern and the performances are fully the equal of
Magnard's romantically impressionistic music. The discs – once
to be had separately – are now available in a single width
hinge-out case.
Rob Barnett
BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra/Jean-Yves Ossonce 
