Two French symphonies
dating from Milhaud’s early years in
the USA.
The First Symphony
begins with a blithely strolling theme.
The pilgrim wanders through an ever-changing
landscape of delicately touched-in colours
- some of them dark. The second movement
is more clearly troubled: turmoil rather
than torment. Solo instruments (violin
and woodwind) emote and stand clear
before falling back into the heaving
background. This work represents a pilgrimage
into wintry discontent. The great cortege
of the finale has overtones of victory
won but achieved through desolation.
While there are moments of Provencal
innocence (1:50) these are suborned
and undermined by the tragic undertow
of history. The Symphony ends loud but
there is no triumph for the still-small
voice.
Five years after Milhaud
had conducted the premiere of the First
at Chicago he was commissioned by the
Koussevitsky Foundation to write a further
symphony. The dissonance and malcontent
most strongly asserted in the First’s
two central movements here enters the
scene immediately. There is some of
that rustic child’s innocence but over
the first three movement it is rarely
allowed to rise free from the nightmare
ridden landscape; not that the horrors
are directly stated in the first movement
- like an M.R. James story they are
more usually suggested than stated face-on.
The two middle movements have their
darkness but in the next movement this
gradually metamorphoses into sorrow
perhaps associated with the times. In
the fourth (of five) movement there
are several moments where Milhaud’s
knowledge of the then-contemporary American
symphony, especially those by Harris,
arises. Similar episodes can be found
in Milhaud’s Service Sacré
recently issued on both Accord and
Naxos Milken. The finale: called Alleluia,
is playfully fugal, athletic and less
plagued with the tragic march of time.
The composer ends the work in triumph
this time unclouded by loss.
The language of the
two symphonies is a songful amalgam
of Ravel-like delight and Hindemithian
disillusion. Dissonance is used as part
of the colour-scheme. In no sense are
either of these scores in the Schoenberg
camp. There are some parallels with
the Martinů symphonies also written
and welcomed in the USA. The Suite
Provencal is for a fully specified
orchestra. The work comprises eight
movements each tempo-labelled. We are
not pointed at particular dances or
landscapes though Milhaud may have had
his own scenario. The Provence-based
ideas are drawn from the incidental
music he wrote for the play Bertran
de Born. Milhaud successfully fends
off neo-classicism, although a French
pastoral Pulcinella does insinuate
himself into the proceedings from time
to time as do drum-clamorous premonitions
of a work dating from a decade later,
E.J. Moeran’s Serenade. The music
has the flavour of bright-eyed and cheeky
rustic chivalry, with archaic country
dances (Susato and Praetorius) and wind
serenades which sometimes rise to majestic
Handelian heights (funereal in the case
of the penultimate movement).
This disc makes its
welcome reappearance in the DG-Universal
‘Rosette Collection’ hooked on the accolade
extended to this and other Universal
discs in the Penguin Guide to CDs.
The original disc had
a Toulouse Capitole/Plasson sequel;
far too easily forgotten in the shadow
of the CPO complete traversal by Alun
Francis. That sequel offered Milhaud
Symphonies: 6 and 7 with the Ouverture
méditerranéenne on
DG 439 939-2GH. There are no signs of
that disc resurfacing so if you see
it in a secondhand shop you know what
to do.
At mid-price this is
a great bargain. In idiomatic performances
handsomely recorded this disc opens
the door to Milhaud’s distinctive brand
of moody symphonism and blithe pastoral
innocence.
Rob Barnett
.
Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse/Michel
Plasson 
