Grit and passion in this feast of Poulenc
Roger Nichols finds the late Bramwell Tovey’s wholehearted approach is spot on
Tovey engenders a sense of energy and fun in the Sinfonietta
Poulenc
Les Animaux modèles; Sinfonietta; Discours du général; La Baigneuse de Trouville; Pastourelle BBC Concert Orchestra/ Bramwell Tovey Chandos CHSA 5260 (CD/SACD) 74:22 mins Poulenc agreed with Elgar that a dash of vulgarity was infinitely preferable to pale inconsequence, claiming as major works of art the 18th-century French painter Chardin’s pictures of bleeding chunks of flesh hung up in a butcher’s shop. There’s plenty of meat in Poulenc’s Sinfonietta, not least in the abundance of memorable tunes, some borrowed from one of the composer’s many abandoned string quartets. The late Bramwell Tovey is alert to their quality, and especially, as often with Poulenc, to their arch shaping so that one needs to tread lightly on their final notes. Nor does he overdo the vulgarity. French brass players up to around the 1960s liked a wide vibrato, to the point that their horns often sounded like saxophones. But in the third movement of the Sinfonietta Poulenc specifically orders a trumpet phrase at one point to be ‘doucement chanté mais sans vibrato’, duly obeyed. Above all, Tovey engenders a sense of energy and fun, reminding us that although the work lasts nearly half an hour (for which extravagance Poulenc apologised to his commissioners, the BBC), it is well named.
The other main work on the disc, the ballet Les Animaux modèles, spices up its lighter moments with some of real grit and passion, indicating that while La Fontaine’s fables, on which the work is based, have regularly found their way on to the desks of the young, their overall message is often coldly cynical, not to say brutal – to which conductor, orchestra and recording wholeheartedly respond. PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Debussy • Dukas • Roussel
Debussy: Jeux; Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune; Dukas: Fanfare pour précéder La Péri; La Péri; Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane – Suite No. 2
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/domingo Hindoyan
Onyx ONYX 4224 68:15 mins
In general these are honest, respectful performances. In Dukas’s ballet music La Péri, the complex details are never allowed to swamp the logical argument, and the same goes for the second suite from Roussel’s ballet Bacchus et Ariane. Indeed, in ‘Ariane’s dance’, more could have been made of the dynamic variations for the solo violin and wind instruments.
Debussy’s faun is presented in a suitable atmosphere of ecstatic languor. One or two details are not quite as they should be (breaking Debussy’s phrasing in bars 13-14 is surely unnecessary?), but the tone of the orchestra’s principal flute player Cormac Henry, pure and innocent with only the barest hint of vibrato, is in line with the one for which the composer would have been writing in the 1890s.
For Jeux, though, respectful honesty alone is not enough. Debussy said it was written for an orchestra ‘without feet’ – not one of amputees, he was quick to explain, but one ‘lit from behind’ as often in Parsifal. As the title tells us, it should be playful and tease us with possibilities that may or may not be realised. Also, this performance is not wholly accurate over dynamics and tempos, strangely ignoring the ‘en retenant’ into fig.61, a crucial moment where for the first time the three dancers come together.
It’s a hard work to bring off, and Ravel’s protégé and friend Manuel Rosenthal refused to take the risk of conducting it until he was in his fifties. So, at 42, Domingo Hindoyan has time on his side. Roger Nichols PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Haydn
Symphonies Nos 6-8, ‘Le matin’, ‘Le midi’, ‘Le soir’ Florilegium/ashley Solomon
Channel Classics CCS44722 70:29 mins This famous triptych of symphonies, describing the various times of the day, marked the start of Haydn’s long career in the service of Prince Esterházy, who appointed him vice-kapellmeister in the spring of 1761. Haydn was clearly keen to show off the skills of the players he had at his disposal, and each symphony contains elaborate solos for individual members of the orchestra: the slow movement of the
middle work, ‘Le Midi’, for instance, is an operatic scena featuring solo violin and cello plus a pair of flutes playing in mellifluous thirds, and there’s an elaborate cadenza for the two stringed instruments alone. (The violin part would have been taken by the orchestra’s leader, Luigi Tommasini, given another long solo in the slow movement of ‘Le Soir’.)
Ashley Solomon coaxes lively performances out of the members of Florilegium, with the depictions of rain, lightning and thunder conjured up by Haydn in the concluding storm movement of ‘Le Soir’ sounding particularly vivid. Agata Daraskaite’s sweet-toned violin solos are a distinct asset, as are the double bass solos by Carina Cosgrave. The trio in the minuet movement of ‘Le Soir’, with its bass solo, is taken at a tempo that’s a good deal slower than the minuet itself, making it, perhaps, less hard to play, but it works musically. In all three symphonies the gap between the trio and the return of the minuet is a little too long, but that’s a small point. An enjoyable recording. Misha Donat PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Rachmaninov
Symphony No. 2; The Isle of the Dead; Vocalise
Sinfonia of London/john Wilson Chandos CHSA 5297 (CD/SACD) 67:14 mins
Here are precisely the three works that Rachmaninovthe-conductor committed to disc. Inevitably one is tempted to make comparisons – but an album should stand on its own terms.
The new recording starts well with the moodily atmospheric
Isle of the Dead, and the Vocalise taken fairly swiftly, though John Wilson adds an artful ebb and flow to the tempo. Yet, despite the orchestra’s admirable ensemble and immaculate playing, hearing these beautifully recorded performances left me unmoved. The reason why became clear with the Symphony.
Some wag once said the trouble with Rachmaninov’s symphonies is that you’re always half-expecting a piano to start up. While I’ve never felt this, there are moments in the Third Symphony when the orchestra appears to be providing a colourful backdrop to some grand
opera (Rachmaninov, it may be remembered, largely gained his conducting credentials in the opera house), and one half expects an impassioned soprano solo to start up. The fact I felt this more than usual here is not, I think, a positive sign. The orchestra appears to be presenting an immaculate drawing room ready for a diva to make her entrance, rather than itself being the compelling protagonist. Listen to the St Petersburg Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons, a conductor fluent in the Russian tradition with a proven affinity to opera, and you hear the strings playing their collective hearts out. If only Wilson and his orchestra brought that emotional commitment. Daniel Jaffé PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Rimsky-korsakov • Tchaikovsky
Rimsky-korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh Suite; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 London Symphony Orchestra/ Gianandrea Noseda
LSO Live LSO0858 (CD/SACD) 66:45 mins Like its predecessor, pairing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth
Symphony with the Musorgsky/ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, this release features
a marginally more characterful performance of the fantasy companion, here the substantial suite from Rimsky-korsakov’s operatic masterpiece The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh. Korsakov’s nature-poetry evoking the pantheism of the saintly maiden Fevroniya, led as bride to the ill-starred city of Kitezh at just the wrong time, comes with the most beautiful of oboe solos and onomatopoeic woodwind birdsong against the background of Wagnerian forest murmurs.
Gianandrea Noseda’s pacing leads us to the heavenly kingdom of Fevroniya and her beloved Vsevolod, killed in battle with the marauding Tatars, with a natural ease that creates the innocent sense of wonder at the end. The picturesque wedding scene and the exciting battle flow well, too, with appropriate respective glitter and grimness.
Tchaikovsky’s most straightforward symphony gets a performance to match, once again graced with Noseda’s natural sense of movement which stops the progress of fate-as-providence feeling stagey; there’s only one bit of untoward speeding, in the more troubled central sequence of the Andante cantabile (horn solo perfect, oboe again superb). The waltz-scherzo suggests Noseda and the LSO should tackle the complete Tchaikovsky ballets next, while the song-themes are phrased with operatic instinct which sets the Italian conductor alongside compatriots Abbado and Muti as an instinctive interpreter of this composer. Noseda’s febrile vein, though, might have found a stronger outlet; there’s less electricity in the Finale’s conflict than you get with the supreme interpreter, Yevgeny Mravinsky. Sound, like symphony and performance, is clear and well balanced. David Nice PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Sibelius
Symphonies Nos 3 & 5; Pohjola’s Daughter
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra/ Santtu-matias Rouvali
Alpha Classics ALPHA 645 75:38 mins This latest recording of Sibelius’s Third gets off to a vital start, with marvellously gutsy playing from the Gothenburg strings. Then a doubt: does conductor Santtu-matias Rouvali allow tension to sag rather in the slower link between the exposition and the development? And after picking up momentum again and delivering a gripping account of the recapitulation, does he make a bit of a meal of the slower coda? The middle movement, too, is taken a bit too deliberately to generate its slow-waltz-like swing. And why does Rouvali insert mannered little hesitations into the initial statement of the hymn-like idea that is to dominate the second half of the finale – only then to hit on a convincing tempo which he holds majestically to the end?
His reading of the Fifth Symphony is more straightforward. Indeed, the opening sounds almost casual – more pastoral than heroic – as he eases into his stride, while the scherzo second half of the opening movement accelerates more rapidly than in most rival versions. The Andante middle movement, with the Gothenburg winds in glowing form, and the finale, with its swinging horn theme and grandly grinding peroration are finely projected without eccentricities.
Yet the most exciting performance is of the Kalevalabased tone-poem Pohjola’s Daughter – a piece that can easily fall into a