Pierné: Divertissement - D'Indy: Istar

I discovered a potentially interesting dowload service in eClassical.com, ostensibly operating from Sweden. Pricing is per second so relatively short pieces can be had quite cheaply in 16-bit or 24-bit FLAC. The catalogue is still sparse, but with a selection of Chandos, BIS, BBC Legends and Da Capo albums, there is quite enough on offer.

I tried the service with two shorter pieces by turn-of-the-century French composers. d'Indy I had already come across in his Symphonie Cévenole, and it was a rather pleasant encounter. Apart from the symphony there is also Istar, op. 42, that shines in his orchestral output. I picked it from a recording that is part of a Chandos series of d'Indy's complete orchestral output. It has been quite well received by the international critique.

Istar, composed in 1896 (ten years after the Symphonie) is a short (less than 15 minutes) set of variations of which the waltzy theme appears only at the end. The orchestral writing is quite accomplished although it is not as inspired as in the Symphonie Cévenole, I find. There are some beautiful orientalising passages with delicate flowing lines for the strings but the ambience seems to be interrupted by more chattering variations given to the woodwinds. All in all the work didn't catch my imagination.

Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937) is another luminary from that same period. He was allegedly more respected as an organist (taking over the duties at St Clotilde from César Franck) and as a conductor (leading the famous Concerts Colonnes for over two decades, premiering, amongst others, Stravinksy's Firebird; Pierre Monteux was leading the viola section when Pierné took the helm of the orchestra but he would soon strike out on a fabulous international career as a conductor himself). I selected the short (11')  Divertissement sur un thème pastoral, op. 42, written in 1932 towards the end of the composer's life (he died in 1937). It's a perfectly innocuous piece, light as a soufflé and hardly making a claim to being more than symphonic trifle. Not particularly substantial enough to tempt me to dig deeper into this oeuvre.

Chandos' chocolate box-styled cover art is perfectly in tune with the musical qualities of these two pieces.

D'Indy - Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français

As I was travelling this week, there was precious little time to listen. Since I have an iPad, my trusted Sony mp3 player has seen very little use. Understandable, as the multifunctional pad is so wonderfully convenient. Last summer I copied a CD from my father's collection onto my MacBook hard disc with a work I do not have in my collection. It's a Decca recording of Vincent D'Indy's Symphonie Cévenole, or, as it is officially called, the Symphony sur un chant montagnard français (his op. 25, from 1886). It fits well in my ongoing exploration of French turn-of-the-century music. D'Indy was one of the key figures in that period, likely more because of his pedagogical contribution than because of his compositional influence. A devoted pupil of César Franck, he worked tirelessly to extend his master's legacy. From afar it seems he was basically a reactionary, both in a musical and a political sense. Not surprisingly, he didn't think much of the impressionistic wave of innovation triggered by Debussy.

D'Indy's currently available recorded output is not particularly rich and pretty scattered. Chandos has over the past few years issued a survey of his symphonic works. The Symphonie Cévenole has seen recordings by luminaries such as Ansermet, Monteux and Munch. More recently there have been versions by Dutoit (which I have listened to) and Marek Janowski (who seems to be particularly fond of the piece as he recorded it twice). According to the English Wikipedia the Symphony on a French mountain air is virtually the only work of D'Indy that is still played today.

After a first audition I was not particularly taken by the piece. Tuneful, accessible and well written, certainly. But not the kind of music I particularly warm to. With the prominent obligato part for the piano the 'symphony' also leans heavily towards the virtuoso romantic concerto of fantasia. Again, not a genre I find myself turning to very often. But since I have listened to it quite a few times and I've grown considerably more fond of this skillfull blend of Franckian harmony, Lisztian bravura and Dvorakian rusticity. It makes a perfect foil for Franck's more imposing symphony and one wonders why this coupling has not been recorded much more often, as it has been done here by Charles Dutoit and his Montréal orchestra (it has recently been reissued on the Australian Eloquence label in another imaginative coupling with Paul Dukas' Symphony in C). The Decca recording really cannot be faulted as the playing is as committed and cultured as one could wish for. Its technical quality is excellent as were almost all recordings from this source.

Back home I connected the MacBook to my hifi setup via the Musical Fidelity V-Link. On my way back from Stockholm I picked up the latest issue of Stereophile which awarded a 'computer audio component of the year' prize to the Amarra music playback software. I had never heard about it but was intrigued to read that this Mac-only software piggy-backs on iTunes to upgrade the audiophile quality. What it actually does is to bypass Apple's playback pathway and to change the sample rate of Apple's CoreAudio engine to match that of the file being played. Stereophile found Amarra to sound  "wonderful, always naturally detailed and consistently involving." Somewhere else I read that Amarra made the music to sound more 'analog'. Reason enough, I thought, to download the 'Mini' version and see whether it did was what promised. Installation was easy enough but running the software has been less straightforward. I've been able to listen to the D'Indy on the B&W 804s, but toggling between iTunes and Amarra, did to my mind not reveal a great deal of difference. Amarra playback sounds a trifle less harsh and more creamy than iTunes but it's not an award-winning leap. But maybe I need to experiment a little more with it as Amarra offers a Playlist mode that bypasses iTunes altogether, provides full compatibility with FLAC files (which iTunes doesn't) and includes a user-adjustable equaliser. To be further explored ...