Marvelous, this lavish, Wagnerian song-symphony written by Ernest Chausson in the late 1880s. I've always held this recording in high esteem. Waltraud Meier is a commanding voice that soars effortlessly over the orchestral waves that are summoned by a glorious Philadelphia Orchestra. The recording dates from the late 1980s and that must have been the time when I attended a live concert with this orchestra in the Brussels Bozar. Whilst the Philadelphians likely were on the way down from the stratospheric heights they once occupied under the long tenures of Stokowski and Ormandy, I came away mightily impressed. In this recording too the richness of the orchestral sound is still intoxicating. I haven't heard any competing recordings (remarkably, there aren't very many) and it is well possible that the music sounds a little too Teutonic for its own good. Nevertheless I have always enjoyed this reading, with its wonderful fin-de-siècle shadings, its shimmering palette, the long, flowery lines and the pervasive sense of forlornness.
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