We are still reaping the harvest of Jolivet's
centenary last year. This disc represents an intriguing outlier
to the main fleuve of the crop. It's a collection of previously
unrecorded works for wind-bands of various specifications.
The first piece is a succession of fanfares
but has more musical coherence and substance than you might
have expected. The six pieces comprise a Prelude and Postlude
framing four pieces bearing the names of characters from Racine's Britannicus. Jolivet arrogates to himself some
room for characterisation. So the misguided and toadying Narcisse
is portrayed through a weak and sleazily flashy trumpet
solo. Much of this music is otherwise shot through with scathing
tragedy staying away from the extremes of dissonance but adding
grinding harmonic collisions for savour and atmosphere. The
storyline has the brother Nero and Britannicus competing for
power until Nero poisons Britannicus and Julia at a feast given
to celebrate their marriage. The music is for four trumpets,
four horns, four trombones, tuba, timps and two percussion.
The Second Trumpet Concerto made its way
in the world under the blessing of Maurice André who took the
concerto across the world. It followed the First Trumpet Concerto
by six years. The orchestra comprises solo trumpet in C, two
flutes, b flat clarinet, cor anglais, alto and tenor saxes,
contrabassoon, percussion (bass drum, chinese cymbal, tom-tom),
harp, piano and bass. Essentially it's a marriage of jazz ensemble
and windband. The jazz strand is pretty much to the fore, mixed
with the street rhythms of Rio à la Milhaud and Villa-Lobos. The jazz acccent is brought
out by the soloist using wa-wa and the percussionist uses metallic
brushes for the drums. After the street energy of the Mesto
the gentle lonely Grave has subtly melancholic soliloquising
from the solo. It's irresistible music irresistibly played by
Saunier. Street cars and bustle return at first slowly in the
Giocoso and then with growing and growling force. The
music picks up that rasping Lambert and Stravinsky edginess
made all the more tart by jarring salvoes from the percussion
desks. This last movement is the weakest - it suffers from a
sense of having stopped rather than having reached a logical
conclusion.
The Soir et Défilé are two of the
Trois Croquis written for piano in 1932 and laid out
for windband by the composer in 1936. Soir is painted
in subdued and brooding colours comparable with the satiated
tone of Bax's symphonic epilogues. The Défilé is a subtly
touched-in march presented in a cloud of fragments almost imperceptibly
coalescing into a powerful statement that has the underlying
indomitable tread of Havergal Brian and of Percy Grainger's
windband music.
The final four-movement piece is the Suite
Transocéane (1955). It's a transcription by Désiré Dondeyne
of a piece written in 1955 for orchestra with saxophone and
piano. In that form it was premiered in September 1955 by the
Louisville Orchestra. The ripe jazziness and gamin cheeriness
can be related to Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit as well
as his South American pieces. The other voices to be heard include
wild and woolly Broadway, street carnival, Stravinskian tension
(as in the Rite of Spring) and ominous nocturnal marching.
Contrary to expectations this is the most subtle of all the
four pieces here. The finale is a towering crescendo, lurching
and swaying forward and rising into a volcanic landscape yawning
and explosive. Massive tectonic plates collide, bruise and fragment.
The essential liner note is by Emmanuel
Hondré and there's also a reminiscence of Jolivet by that doyen
of the French windband genre, Désiré Dondeyne. The notes are
in French and English.
This is a desirable collection that is
worth tracking down. It's handled in the UK by Discovery. The music is a fascinating retrieval and
opens a largely unsuspected window onto Jolivet's musical legacy.
Let's have more.
Until then, do get this disc. It's full
of music you are unlikely to have heard and the Paris Gendaremerie
band acquit themselves with both brazen brilliance and subtle
poetry.
By the way, Maguelone are issuing Jolivet's
complete piano music edition on MAG 111.136, 111.137 and 111.138
(see review
of first two discs).
Rob Barnett
BUY NOW
AmazonUK
Clément Saunier (trumpet)
