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DG released these three prime examples of Parisian modernism in 1957 (Milhaud and Honegger) and 1960 (Roussel), late enough that it's fairly inexplicable why all are monaural. I am as enthusiastic about Markevitch's performance as the two previous reviewers, but realistically this CD is for listeners with a special interest in the period between the wars when all three composers were at the peak of their reputations. Even though Honegger's Sym. #5 was composed in 1950, this music evokes the rich artistic culture that was once Paris. The Second World War ended French dominance in all the arts. As composers, Boulez and Messiaen were more important than any postwar French painter, but in truth the musical dominance of Paris beginning around 1910 depended on refugees and emigrants like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Copland and Koussevitzky.
Which is to say that Rouseel and Les Six seem today like minor figures; their brand of modernism couldn't compete with the Second Viennese School harmonically, and their talents were not on the scale of the great Russians. I imagine that DG's release of these historical recordings is due more to the latter-day cult around Igor Markevitch -- another Russian -- than the music itself. the Lamoureux orchestra's playing is flavorful and very Gallic, but for sheer ability the musicianship displays the depleted state of French orchestras until they were revived by forming new ensembles like the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre National de France. Expect squeaky woodwinds and thin strings, not helped by thinness in the recording as well.
and the scores? Two are based on Greek mythology, Les Chorephores (The Libation Bearers) being an oratorio that takes off from Aeschylus's treatment of the story of Elektra and Orestes, the same one that Strauss made his opera from, while Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane is based on the same story that Strauss used for another opera, Ariadne auf Naxos. The French versions are not masterpieces, but their composers employ the devices of modernism, including motor rhythms, primitivist sounds in the percussion, jagged mottoes instead of melody, modal harmonies, and of course, dissonance. Honegger's symphony, tightly arranged in its formal construction, has the subtitle "Di Tre Re," referring to three drumbeats on the note D (Re in Italian). The very truncated program notes make a case for this music being an anguished response to the bleakness of the postwar world under the shadow of the Bomb, but Honegger can't escape his roots, and the middle movement twitters and dithers away in the usual mode of Poulenc or Milhaud. The finale features agitated, mechanized motor rhythms, reminding us of Honeggger's famous homage to the locomotive, Pacific 231. Only the first movement, marked Grave, seems to me like an outcry of anguish, although both outer movements are powerful.
Les Chorephores was also recorded, in stereo, by Leonard Bernstein, who himself felt the pull of Paris thanks to his teacher and mentor Aaron Copland. That reading, on a special Sony release, is better sung than Markevitch's, but even Bernstein's charisma can't surpass this DG release for sounding so purely French. The highlight of both recordings is the Exhortation, which features a fervent spoken narrative with interjections by a muttering chorus and percussion. The remaining movements have o special bearing on Greek tragedy and seem to me like Milhaud tying hard to be forceful, with moderate results.
Like the Suite no. 2 from Daphnis and Chloe, the second suite from Roussel's ballet begins near the en and gives us the climax, as Ariadne is visited on the island of Naxos by the god Bacchus, who kisses her and thus makes her immortal. Roussel's modernism has always struck me as sounding self-taught, and at its best it achieves an allure like the primitive-but-modern paintings of Rousseau. I don't think anyone will hear any particular match between this music and the Greek myth -- we are simply in Roussel's world, as we would be in any of his symphonies. If you like his idiom, this is a leading example, along with the Third Sym.
I don't mean to downplay the pleasure to be had from this CD, a one of a kind memento and valuable for that reason. All three works are among the most engaging of their composers. But I felt that earlier reviewers had oversold the scores and the playing of the Lamoureux Orchestra. Setting that aside, this is an intense dose of Parisian modernism at its most ambitious.
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Huntley Dent
French modernism at its most ambitious, in historical mono recordings
2011年6月11日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
