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.

Jongen: Symphonie Concertante

Having been tickled by the Poulenc Organ Concerto I sought out another specimen from this exotic subgenre in my dad's collection: Jongen's Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra, op. 81(1926). Joseph Jongen was a Belgian composer (1873-1953), who, as César Franck, hailed from Liège. However, contrary to the latter, Jongen remained in Belgium taking up brief stints as administrator and educator and the Liège and Brussels conservatories and otherwise living as an independent composer, teacher and organ player.

The Symphonie Concertante was his most ambitious work and it was written when he had achieved full maturity as a composer. Although the work is seen as one of the most important written for organ and orchestra, it is not widely known nowadays. The Liège Orchestra recorded it in recent years for the Cypres Label with Olivier Latry at the keyboards. This is still available. A Telarc recording with Michael Murray and the SFSO has disappeared from the catalogue. A similar fate befel the much lauded 1960s recording for Capitol with Virgil Fox as soloist and George Prêtre leading the French national opera orchestra. And so has vanished the version I listened to with the Dallas SO led by Eduardo Mata. It is, perhaps, strange to see this fringe work taken up by top US orchestras but this is a brilliant score that certainly matches the American penchant for the monumental and the grandiloquent.

What also may play a role is the fact that the work was originally commissioned for the inauguration of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ at the eponymous department store in Philadelphia. Retail tycoon Rodney Wanamaker had the organ expanded to being the biggest pipe organ in the world and at this point it still is the largest operational organ anywhere. It is a testimony to Jongen's stellar reputation as an organist that he was eligible for this kind of prestigious commission. However, because of the passing away of Jongen's father and Wanamaker's himself in 1928, the work ended up being played on the organ for which it was intended only in 2008, on the occasion of Macy's 150th anniversary (this live recording is still available). The actual premiere of Jongen's work took place in Brussels.

The Symphonie Concertante is cast in a fairly conservative idiom and structure. There are four movements: the propulsive first movement (an Allegro in the Dorian Mode) is conceived in a loose sonata structure based on two rhytmically contrasting themes. The scherzo-like Divertimento plays out a playful, will-o'-the-wisp theme against a more stolid, hymn-like melody. The Lento misterioso (at 12 minutes also the longest movement) is a beautifully translucent meditation. Finally, a brilliant Toccata seemingly makes the orchestra burst out in loud laugh salvos. The work ends with a stupendous peroration supported by shattering brass fanfares. It must be petrifying to experience this in a live performance!

All in all the work lasts around 35 minutes. Whilst the musical language is not particularly innovatory, it is not epigonal either. The influence of Franck, Wagner and Debussy has been very skillfully blended into a colourful late-romantic palette. The most conspicuous influence is maybe Marcel Dupré but it is hard to say who influenced whom as Dupré's Symphonie for Orchestra and Organ op. 25 was signed off a year after the Jongen was premiered. I have heard Dupré's compelling, massive and somberly tinted work on a Telarc recording with Michael Murray. Both compositions have quite a bit in common, not in the least a supremely lyrical and flowing slow movement. Contrary to, for example, Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony where the instrument is more seamlessly embedded in the orchestral fabric, both Jongen and Dupré use the organ in a more differentiated way: as a concerto solo instrument, a "section" within the orchestra, and as a background accompaniment for orchestral instruments. Jongen's Symphonie Concertante is a genuinely inspired composition, testifying of considerable compositional powers and a brilliant skill in bringing these two sonic universes (the 'pope' and the 'emperor') together.

The performance with Jean Guillou at the The Lay Family Concert Organ (built by the American company C.B. Fisk) at the Meyerson Symphony Center and Mata conducting the Dallas SO is very successful it seems to me. From what I hear from comparing the Dallas recording with the Telarc version on YouTube, is that the latter has more drive and a more brilliantly recorded organ which may or may not be a good thing depending on taste. The Dorian recording provided considerable listening pleasure. Another interesting discovery.

Poulenc: Les Biches, Organ Concerto

Christmas is traditionally the time for exchanging gifts and I was very happy to see my CD collection grow with almost 30 units. One of the surprises was a 5-CD box with re-issued recordings of a significant selection of Francis Poulenc's orchestral works, featuring Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre Nationale de France (and the Philharmonia for one of the discs).

I picked out the music for the ballet Les Biches, which I have been listening to for years on a Chandos recording with Yan Pascal Tortelier. The music was commissioned by Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes in 1924 and put Poulenc on the map. The work is inspired by  paintings of Watteau that depict Louis XV and his various mistresses dallying in his Parc aux Cerfs (hence 'biches') at Versailles. This five-movement suite is Poulenc at his jocular best: neoclassical poise married to lighthearted, tongue-in-cheeck and at times somewhat abrasive humour. Dutoit's reading is cheerful and bubbly as it should be, and the ONF is in good form. Very agreeable.

The other piece I selected from this box is the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani. The work dates from 1938 and strikes a more mature and reflective pose than the ballet. In fact, its composition coincided with Poulenc's visit to the Black Virgin at Rocamadour (quite close to where we are here in the Lot-et-Garonne) which initiated a dramatic rediscovery of his Christian faith and hence constituted a turning point in his biography. For Poulenc, the Organ Concerto belonged to the group of religously inspired works - including the Gloria and the Stabat Mater - that he would continue to elaborate later in life.

I had all but forgotten about this work but as soon as I started to listen, it struck me as very familiar. Browsing through my dad's music collection I found a recording with Michael Murray at the keyboard accompanied by Robert Shaw and his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It's an early Telarc recording from 1982. This must have been the CD that I have been listening to in the early days. I can't really recall having come across any other version.

This rediscovery, via the Decca recording (with Dutoit/Philharmonia/Peter Hurford), was very pleasurable indeed as it's a great and somewhat wayward work that deserves regular auditioning. It's cast in a single movement that connects seven contrasting sections. There is a little bit of everything: the 'soccer playing friars' (cfr the Gloria) are rubbing shoulders with a deeply contemplative atmosphere that harks back to the Baroque era. There is place for the late Romantic monumental (à la Vierne or Widor) too. As said the Dutoit reading provided considerable listening pleasure but to my mind it pales in comparison with the more deeply felt and spiritual rendering by Shaw and Murray. Again we are dealing here with one of those beautifully layered and finely chiseled Soundstream recordings that illuminate the work's somewhat opaque textures from within. Compared to Shaw, Dutoit sounds positively rushed. I think the more measured approach works better when it comes to giving the listener a feel for the intricacies of this complex score. The organ in Atlanta's Cathedral of Saint Philip, an Aeolian-Skinner instrument built in 1962, produces a wonderfully translucent sound. Again this compares favourably with the more massive voice of the organ in the cathedral of St Albans, just north of London (the organ has been completele restored in recent years; the recording dates, however, from 1993). All in all a work I would like to revisit soon.

Debussy: Ibéria - Turina: Danzas Fantasticas and other orchestral works

It's holiday period and we are at my parents' place in France. Time to catch up with some reading, movie watching and listening. First I checked what music of Debussy my dad has in his CD collection. Which is not a lot. One of the few discs is an early digital recording (1981) on the Telarc label, featuring the Mexican maestro Eduardo Mata and his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Debussy's Ibéria. This is one of his most celebrated orchestral scores. It's a tryptich within the larger tryptich of the Images pour orchestre, written between 1905 and 1912. I must confess that this is not the Debussy that I really love. The music is colourful and brilliantly evocative but to my mind it misses the epic sweep that is characteristic for the late works.

Anyway I passed some enjoyable hours comparing three versions with one another. The Mata recording I liked a lot. It's a broad and spacious reading but very, very polished. Maybe the last movement - Le matin d'un jour de fêtes - should have had a little more fire. Anyway the Dallas SO were a splendid body of musicians at that time and their artistry has been beautifully captured by the then revolutionary Soundstream technology. It's a very airy and detailed, but also weighty and balanced sound. Telarc has never done better than in those early years of digital. That is all too obvious when we compare the 1981 recording with a recent issue in SACD format on the same label. This time it is Jesus Lopez-Cobos with the Cincinatti SO in his valedictory recording in 2001 with the orchestra after more than two decades as chief conductor. The sound is flat and lifeless and whatever the qualities of the orchestral playing, they are not able to shine. I really get very annoyed when I hear this kind of anesthetised sound reproduction. There must be logic - commercial or otherwise - behind this progressive erosion of recording quality but it eludes me.

The third and last version is a 1952 recording with the Grand Orchestre Symphonique de l'INR (otherwise known as the Belgian National Radio Symphony Orchestra) conducted by Franz André, available for download via the Pristine Classical website. This was a very pleasant discovery, and proof of the fact that fifty years ago we had orchestras in our country that could compete at an international level. Franz André, who had been leading the orchestra from the 1920s onward, recorded a significant body of work issued as Telefunken LPs. The orchestra was also famous for giving premieres of important new works. Unbelievably enough NIR orchestra gave the first European performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in Paris and the first West European performance of the Fourth Symphony by Shostakovich. The Debussy recording has been expertly restored by Pristine's Andrew Rose from an original Telefunken LP, pressed in the UK by Decca. It's a great performance, very animated and tense, quite the opposite of the approach taken by Eduardo Mata. But despite the less sophisticated sonics (still very good though) it is an equally enjoyable experience.

I also listened to the orchestral works by Joaquin Turina that complemented Debussy's Iberia on the Lopez-Cobos disc: the three Danzas Fantasticas (op. 22), the Sinfonia Sevillana (op. 23) and the earlier Procesion del Rocio (op. 9). All very colourful aural postcards from Spain but nothing to my mind that really jumps out. The Sinfonia Sevillana is a collection of three tone poems - similar to Ibéria - rather than a work that is underpinned by a unifying symphonic logic. The most engaging piece, maybe, is the Procesion which raucously winds its way through the streets of Seville every year just before Christmas.

Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

This was something very special. Today I listened twice to Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, on vinyl. This recording has always been very dear to me, as it came in the wake of and very much extends the reach of The Wall. The latter, and particularly the 1982 Alan Parker film that was inspired by it, was one of the most formative musical experiences in my life. It struck me when I was at a vulnerable age, full of doubt and not a little anguish as I transited into adulthood. I went to see the movie four times in a row. Its strong images reinforced by Pink Floyd's larger than life music continued to haunt my early adulthood for many years.

The story behind The Final Cut is well known, of course. It was, in fact, Roger Waters' first solo album, so to speak performed by Pink Floyd (that's what the record sleeve says). Soon after finishing the recordings, the band split up, for good. Similar to The Wall it's a rock opera, but on a more modest scale. You have to listen to it front to back; there is no other way. Musically, for me it reaches similar heights as The Wall. I was aware of the superb quality of the recording (very much in evidence in Waters' later albums too), but today I was really struck by the amazing, holographic quality of the music, the vividness and the raw power of it all. It's just perfect and I can't see how my experience today could be superseded even if you threw hands full of money at the hifi setup. Incidentally, the album is recorded using the Holophonics technology, but allegedly the effectiveness of this has never been validated. Well, for me it works wonderfully and for 45 minutes I was in audiophile heaven. But it's more than just about nerdy indulgences, of course. Waters' evocative sound effects, the fantastically sophisticated orchestral arrangements (signed Michael Kamen), the trenchant lyrics, Gilmour's stratospheric guitar solos and the wonderful overall flow of the drama make for a superb listening experience. A great start of what will hopefully be a serene and restful Xmas holiday week.

Rodrigo: Fantasia para un gentilhombre

Another great LP, this collection of two of Rodrigo's most popular compositions by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal orchestra. The recording dates from 1981 and hence is a very early digital recording. However, the sound is absolutely glorious: spacious, richly layered, dynamic, warm yet detailed. It belies the cliché that all early digital productions were plagued by harsh and glassy sound. Apparently the Decca engineers knew what they were doing.

Of these two compositions the Fantasia para un gentilhombre is very much my favourite. Rodrigo wrote it in 1954 at the request of Andres Segovia. It is a superbly poised, gracious work with luminous chamber music-like textures. Structurally it is conceived as a sequence of four movements, based on six dances which Rodrigo pulled from a 17th century instructional work for guitar. Dutoit and his band are very skillfull in drawing out the work's jewel-like qualities, revelling in  the score's many soloistic passages and producing a superbly polished orchestral sound in the denser passages. I've always been impressed by the engaging performance of the solo part by British guitarist Carlos Bonell. Always a pleasure to return to.

Vangelis: Chariots of Fire - China

The revitalised Michell Gyrodec has driven me back to my LP collection. I took it from the easy side by relistening to some of the specimens that date from the time when I was just starting to buy music. I must have been around 14-15 or so. At that stage I was a lot into mainstream electronic music, including JM Jarre and Vangelis. But surely these concept albums put me on track of a more sophisticated listening capacity that was able to grasp the architecture of longer works.

I listened to the B-side of JM Jarre's Oxygène album (his first). Mine is the original LP, dating from 1977. Whilst it does somewhat show its age, it is still wonderful to listen to. You can really  'hear' into the sonic signature of Jarre's electronic toolbox.

Then onwards to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire (1981), the A-side of which is a series of shorter pieces that were used as aural backdrop for the eponymous film. I only listened to the B-side which consists of just a single, spacious, 20-minute track. Whilst Vangelis piano sounds pathetic, the overall recording is quite good. I love the filigree patterns of electronic effects that create a vast, friendly sense of space, nicely projected by the Michell and all its downstream acolytes. Edelkitsch, but I enjoyed it anyhow.

China (1979) is another matter. Musically it is more cogent than Chariots. Again I only listened to the B-side, with Yin & Yang, Himalaya and Summit. Oh, how often have my thoughts drifted towards those magnificent giants when listening to these tracks. Himalaya and Summit together make for a very evocative 15-minute symphonic poem. If one tries to imagine how it might sound performed by a symphony orchestra, it becomes pretty avant garde. Xenakis comes to mind! The recording is quite good and I felt the Michell allowed a much better appreciation of the subtly layered soundscape conjured by Vangelis than I ever remembered hearing. All in all these were great rediscoveries, so thoroughly enjoyable because of the great, lively sound extracted from the worn vinyl by the revitalised Gyrodec.