Gabriel PIERNÉ (1863-1937)
Ramuntcho – Incidental Music (1908)
Suite No.1 (1910) [17:35]
Suite No.2 (1910) [13:50]
Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied – Ballet (1914-15)
Suite No.1 – excerpts (1926) [15:04]
Suite No.2 (1926) [16:09]
Orchestre National de Lille/Darrell Ang
rec. 6-8 October 2015, Le Nouveau Siécle Lille, France
NAXOS 8.573609 [62:38]
In any blind tasting, my guess is that most would think this music from a Russian composer. Certainly in the exoticism of Cydalise et le Chèvre-pieds and the pseudo-Spanishness of Ramuntcho, the spirit of Rimsky-Korsakov feels ever-present, and while we might discern hints of Chabrier in the latter and Ravel in the former (notably in the gorgeous flute passage of the extended La Leçon de Stryax which closes the first of the two suites derived from the music for the ballet), there is little to indicate that this is the work of a composer indelibly associated with French Impressionism.
For avid readers of CD booklet notes (which, hopefully, includes most avid readers of MusicWeb International), the name of Gabriel Pierné will be far more familiar than any of his music. Between 1910 and 1933 he was conductor of the Concerts Colonne, in which capacity he directed the premières of such important works as Debussy’s Ibéria, Images and Jeux, Ravel’s Tzigane and the first suite from Daphnis et Chloé, and as conductor for the Ballets russe he directed the first performance of Stravinsky's Firebird. Yet he was a prolific composer whose output included around three dozen scores for the stage including operas, ballets, and incidental music. This release from Naxos, delayed for some five years after its recording, features suites made up of music from both a ballet (Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied) and incidental music (Ramuntcho)
The music is full of colour, life and variety, the extracts from the ballet rather more lavishly scored and exotic than those from the incidental music, but all of it marked by a strong command of orchestral colour, a clear-sighted narrative thread and a highly-inventive streak which means that every individual piece stands out as a distinct and enthralling musical picture. That sense of drawing the listener in to a world of imagination and colour is greatly heightened by Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang’s approach, which does not linger over the minutiae of intricate inner detail, but paints broad brushstrokes with the moments to savour well projected. The Lille orchestral players respond well to this over-arching approach and come up with some enthralling playing, all of which is generously recorded here.
Marc Rochester
Previous review: Nick Barnard
