À LA FRANÇAISE
Hector
BERLIOZ
Benvenuto Cellini: Overture (1)
Camille SAINT-SAËNS
Danse macabre, op.40; Samson et Dalila, op.47: Bacchanale
(2)
Paul DUKAS
L'Apprenti sorcier (3)
Emmanuel CHABRIER
España (4)
Gabriel FAURE
Pavane, op.50 (5)
Georges BIZET
Jeux d'enfants (6)
César FRANCK
Le Chasseur maudit (7)
Claude DEBUSSY
Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune
(8)
Maurice RAVEL
Pavane pour une infante défunte (9)
Arthur HONEGGER
Pacific 231 (10)
Jacques IBERT
Escales … (11)
Erik SATIE (arr. Debussy)
3 Gymnopédies: nos. 3 & 1 (12);
Parade (13)
Maurice RAVEL
Boléro (14)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
(5), Berliner Philharmoniker (1, 3, 8), Boston Symphony Orchestra (5, 9,
14), London Symphony Orchestra (4, 13), Orchestre de Paris (2, 7), Orchestre
du Capitole de Toulouse (10), Orchestre National de France (6), Orchestre
Symphonique de Montreal (11), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (12)/Ataulfo Argenta
(4), Daniel Barenboim (2, 7), Antal Dorati (13), Charles Dutoit (11), Herbert
von Karajan (8), James Levine (1, 3), Jean Martinon (6), Seiji Ozawa (5,
9, 14), Michel Plasson (10)
DG PANORAMA
469 250-2 [2 CDs, 74.31+72.27]
Crotchet
AmazonUK
AmazonUS
The first question is, who is this sort of collection aimed at? The relative
newcomer to the French repertoire will get a fair introduction to its riches,
and a couple of slightly less standard items (the Ibert and Satie's
Parade) which may be intended as a bait for those with larger collections.
It's easy to criticise the pieces chosen in an anthology, but the Honegger
and the Ibert (a piece usually sneered at as a suite of musical postcards,
but what else can one say of it?) might have been omitted in favour of Roussel's
2nd Bacchus et Ariane Suite. It also provides a showcase for the records
of this repertoire which DG and Decca have produced over the last couple
of decades, and again a lure for more seasoned collectors has been provided
in the 1958 Argenta performance and Dorati's Mercury recording of
Parade. I suppose the idea is that casual purchasers might then want
to enlarge their knowledge of the repertoire by buying the CDs from which
the performances are taken, but I'm not so sure this is going to happen.
Meditating on why the Dukas comes off as the better of Levine's energetic
pair of performances, I think it is because he gives us the idea that the
music is following a pre-arranged trajectory. This does less damage in the
Dukas which was probably composed like that anyway. I don't suggest that
he shows no appreciation of Berlioz's wayward genius, but he doesn't seem
to be surprised by it in the least and so the essential ingredient is missing.
Time was when conductors like Beecham, Stokowski or Toscanini would lavish
all their talents on relative trinkets like the Danse macabre and
L'Apprenti sorcier, communicating their total belief in the music
and introducing countless listeners to the delights of classical music. I
don't think the Levine items will get listeners the same way, and nor will
Barenboim's Saint-Saëns, which he approaches as merely a job to be done.
The more symphonic Franck piece engages his imagination rather more and it
has a lot of conviction, but how imprecise the orchestra is! I get the impression
that Barenboim conducts the particular melodic line which interests him and
lets the rest fend for itself, which it does about half a beat behind.
Ozawa conducts his items with great refinement. Unfortunately the Fauré
suffers from unlovely choral singing with heavy vibrato from the ladies and
crude-toned tenors. A pity, since the piece seems ideally suited to Ozawa's
temperament, more so than the Ravel Pavane which is exquisitely drawn
but a tad static. Such a deadpan Boléro seemed very tedious
for the first ten minutes or so but in the later stages I suddenly realised
that crudity with which the theme was being battered out at a steady, remorseless
rhythm was reminding me of the central section of the first movement of
Shostakovich's 7th Symphony. I should always prefer a performance
with more lift to it, but I admit this has something to say.
Martinon was a sterling interpreter of French music but I have to point out
that if you compare the two slow movements with those in the recently issued
Boult performance (BBC Legends) it is quite startling how much more expressive
range a really great conductor, as opposed to a merely excellent one, can
find in such apparently simple pieces. Similarly Plasson's Pacific 231
seems to take a leisurely outing down a branch line. Technology has come
a long way since those days but other performances have shown that the music
can still evoke the awesome, state-of-the-art roaring monster which the steam
engine seemed to be to Honegger. The Ibert at least lets us appreciate the
refinement and vitality which have brought Dutoit and the Montreal orchestra
to the forefront of French music interpreters (why were they allotted only
the one item?) and the Satie Gymnopédies cast their usual mournful
spell. I have heard more slyly knowing performances of Parade than
Dorati's. Perhaps his brisk straight-down-the-line approach was intended
to let us concentrate on the purely musical virtues of the score. The trouble
is that, to my ears, it doesn't have many.
I've left out two conductors. Ataulfo Argenta died rather young and I've
heard claims that he was a really great conductor in the making, a sort of
Spanish Cantelli. One could not possibly judge the truth of such claims from
a single performance of a six-and-a-half-minute piece, but he certainly does
radiate that total belief which transforms a lesser work into a wholly engrossing
experience, and which is generally missing in this collection. And the other
…? I yield to no one in my detestation of the chromium-plated image
Karajan created for himself as the years rolled on, yet one can only bow
down humbly before this 1965 performance. Hear how perfectly the melodic
lines are wrapped around one another, and how wonderfully he has judged a
tempo which allows for languor and mobility in equal measure. Once upon a
time a DG compilation of repertoire like this would have automatically used
Karajan performances for all the pieces where one existed. Perhaps they had
a point after all.
Christopher Howell
