Auric’s ballet music
for Phèdre is much tougher
than his film music. The theme drew
from him considerable resource, a wide
if grim concentration and a clever use
of such influences as Stravinsky and
Ravel. He wrote the ballet music in
1950 and there are fifteen scenes including
the Prelude, in which we immediately
hear a strong if accommodated Stravinskian
influence. Auric knows just how densely
to argue his case, how portent can be
suggestive and his use of brass and
percussion in this respect is exceptional.
In the first Danse those glowering
winds and adamantine brass are answered
by the relieving string curve – like
wind rippling through gauze in a hothouse.
Romantic longing emerges in Phèdre’s
Dance though the portent of the
lower winds snakes through the tenderness.
Auric characterises with great tact;
when Phèdre confesses her love
for Hippolyte the string and wind writing
reach a height of longing but, equally,
the tensile brass, cello and bass marshalling
and frantic drive alert us to the tragedy
about to be enacted.
The lissom moments
do recall Auric’s impressionist inheritance,
whilst the daemonic energy and rhythmic
charge owe much to Stravinsky, not least
in the context of the work as a ballet.
There are also moments in scene ten,
the Dance of Joy, that distinctly
shadow Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast
– fleetingly, but the influence
is there. The death and processional
are rivettingly done and it’s a tribute
to Auric’s music that one wants to see
the ballet, that one projects it in
one’s mind’s eye as one listens.
Coupled with Phèdre
is a much less oppressive work, Le
Peintre et son modèle, dating
from 1949. This only lasts thirteen
minutes and is in seven scenes. Though
we start with accustomed and tempestuous
drive we soon arrive at the quixotic
and the odd – a hallucinatory waltz,
some Pigalle Music Hall in the fifth
scene and more dream-landscape writing
for piano and orchestra in the finale,
with warm consoling writing to end.
Very fine performances
indeed and lovely, decadent cover art
work – all diaphanous, shimmering and
decidedly coital.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Rob Barnett
Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Arturo Tamayo
