Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales present a vivid mixture of atmospheric impressionism, intense expression and modernist wit, his fascination with the waltz further explored in La valse, a mysterious evocation of a vanished imperial epoch. Heard here in an orchestration by Marius Constant, Gaspard de la nuit is Ravel’s response to the other-worldly poems of Aloysius Bertrand, and the dance suite Le tombeau de Couperin is a tribute to friends who fell in the war of 1914–18 as well as a great 18th-century musical forbear. ‘It is a delightful and assorted collection…presented in splendid performances by the Orchestre National de Lyon led by their music director, the venerable American conductor Leonard Slatkin.’

Ravel orchestrated his piano pieces Alborada del gracioso and Pavane pour une infante défunte to great effect; the former gains in suggestive colour, and the latter evokes nostalgic pathos. Another orchestrated work is the Menuet antique, which is redolent of old French dance forms Rapsodie espagnole, Ravel’s first major orchestral work, shimmers with expectancy and bursts into Spanish dance rhythms, themes he pursued in Pièce en forme de habanera. His earliest orchestral work, the ‘fairy overture’ Shéhérazade, is all that remains of a planned opera based on The Thousand and One Nights. The famous Boléro, an ‘orchestrated crescendo’ of undimmed power, has proved one of the most popular works in all classical music.

Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges captures an imaginative child’s world in which the creatures and objects around him come to life. Wittily portrayed in Colette’s inventive libretto and by Ravel’s meticulous orchestration, furniture, crockery and animals alike are at first provoked by the child’s appalling behavior, finally helping him after he bandages the squirrel’s paw he had previously pricked with his pen. The unforgettably enchanting Mother Goose translates well-known fairytales into music, including the gently melodic Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane, her conversation with the gruffest of beasts, and a final blessing in The Fairy Garden. Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Detroit Symphony, has made more than 100 recordings that in total have earned him seven Grammy® awards and 64 Grammy® nominations.

-----

Review:

The all-French cast articulate the text splendidly, with tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt doing his usual superb number as L'Arithmétique. Mezzo Hélène Hebrard as the Child sounds suitably young and fresh, soprano Annick Massis as the Fire negotiates her high coloratura with accuracy and élan.

– BBC Music Magazine

Fauré / Ravel: String Quartets

This album is the first to present an entire program of works by Debussy and Ravel, the greatest exponents of Impressionism in music, transcribed for two guitars. The arrangements bring new life to the rich canvas of sonorities and complex harmonies in these popular works. The reflective atmosphere in Debussy's famous Clair de lune and special upper-harmonic effects in La plus que lente contrast with the "merry romp" of the Golliwog's Cakewalk and Ravel's nod to Schubert in the Valses nobles et sentimentales.

Ravel' masterpiece, Daphnis et Chloe, was composed for the Ballets Russes and premiered in 1912. Ravel described his sumptuous score, for large orchestra, wind machine and wordless chorus, as "a choreographic symphony in three parts�.

Gerard Schwarz starts Daphnis et Chloé in a very slow tempo that suggests a funeral procession, but then takes the following Danse religieuse surprisingly quickly. Such extremes of tempo—he runs the concluding Bacchanale at such a blazing pace that you can hardly imagine ballet dancers being able to keep up—tends to draw attention more to the conductor than to the music. Still, Schwarz manages to conjure the enchanted atmosphere of the piece (especially in the more exotic passages) with great help from the Seattle Symphony, which plays marvelously—particularly the strings with their beguilingly silken tone.

Schwarz emphasizes the score’s refined textures, making the piece sound more like the 20th-century work that it is, rather than a backward glance at Rimsky-Korsakov (as others, mostly notably Gergiev, do). The recorded sound is splendid, easily capturing fine details in the wide dynamic range (even if the wind machine is less than ideally audible).

Following Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé with Hovhaness’ similarly Greek-themed Meditation on Orpheus is a clever bit of programming. It’s a beautiful and mesmerizing work that mixes the meditative and the rhapsodic in that quintessentially Hovhanessian manner. Schwarz and his orchestra offer a brilliantly realized and impeccably played performance. Not a disc to replace Munch or Boulez, but still a fine choice.

– Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Although piano music occupies a side position in Rautavaara’s vast output, his works for this instrument throw an interesting light on his stylistic evolution. If the Icons and the Partita from the mid-1950s stick to a bold neo-classical writing, the Preludes from the same period resort to a more personal atonal idiom, peppered with harsh dissonances and nervous rhythms. Written in 1969, the kaleidoscopic Etudes, each one based on a different interval, look back a good 50 years, precisely to Debussy’s unapproachable set of Etudes, and perhaps to Messiaen–not absurdly, as the latter is another highly religious composer, akin to Rautavaara’s own personal feeling. The two Piano Sonatas bring the spiritual inspiration a step further. Subtitled respectively “Christus und die Fischer” and “The Fire Sermon”, they combine rich harmonies and motoric rides with almost figurative patterns. Despite the late composition date (1970), the Second Sonata brings out a strong romantic feeling, culminating in the dramatic Andante assai. Laura Mikkola possesses the technical skills required by this demanding music, as well as an ear sensitive to the subtlest harmonic aura. The recording is a bit over-resonant, but truthful to the piano timbre.

– ClassicsToday

Apotheosis (1996) is a revision of the final movement from Rautavaara’s Sixth Symphony (1992), which was the symphonic reworking of music from the opera Vincent, hence the subtitle ‘Vincentiana’. The instrumentation lacks the synthesizer that evokes the paintings of the Dutch master in the opera, but the musical substance is intact.

Consisting of three movements—Daydreams, Nightmares and Dawn—Manhattan Trilogy (2004) does not constitute a symphonic piece as such. Its slow-fast-slow sequence equates to classical precedent, while the thematic working and textural elaboration follow directly from the composer’s practice in his last four symphonies.

Subtitled ‘The Journey’, the Eighth Symphony (1999) pursues its metamorphosis of ideas in ways similar to those of his previous three symphonies, but here the order of movements is nearly Classical; pointedly so in the second and third, whose contrast is emphasized by a lack of pause between movements.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1946, is the country’s leading professional orchestra. It has an establishment of ninety players and performs over 100 concerts annually. They tour extensively within their own country.

Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Pietari Inkinen is one of the most exciting talents of the new generation of conductors. He has collaborated with major orchestras and with soloists such as Vadim Repin, Hilary Hahn, and Pinchas Zukerman. His recording with the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic has received outstanding reviews and was voted the BBC Music Magazine’s recording of the month.

This new release makes a distinguished follow-up to Laura Mikkola's Naxos recording of Rautavaara's First Piano Concerto. When works are new, as these are, it's always fascinating to listen to previous recordings and compare. The Third Piano Concerto, composed for Ashkenazy and recorded by him for Ondine, benefits from having a conductor independent of the pianist. Eri Klas leads a performance more flexible in tempo than Ashkenazy's, though I find him to be marginally the finer pianist, especially in the Adagio assai central movement, where his playing reveals a finer touch, just as the Helsinki Philharmonic is marginally the superior orchestra despite the fact that this newcomer offers more clarity of orchestral detail. Similarly, in the Second Piano Concerto Ralf Gothoni's ever-so-slightly more impulsive way with the music strikes me as preferable to Mikkola's otherwise quite admirable effort, while Klas provides her a finer accompaniment than does Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Bavarian Radio band for Gothoni (while still being very good). Isle of Bliss is beautifully done, though it does not sing quite as well as Segerstam's Helsinki rendition for Ondine.


Because of the ease of comparison, all of this may sound as if Klas and Mikkola's efforts amount to "second best" performances, but that really isn't true. The differences between them and the only available competition are very small, and very much a matter of personal preference. By any standard, these newcomers do full justice to this lovely music. Furthermore, Mikkola is a first-class artist with a fine sense of the music's flow and a terrific technique to boot: listen to the admirable independence of right and left hands in the Third Concerto's finale, for example, a couple of minutes into the movement.


She's also very well recorded. As suggested above, the orchestral textures have greater transparency here than they do on the Ondine recordings, if perhaps not as much warmth and tonal richness. In the final analysis, I can recommend this disc without reservation, even while acknowledging the fact (not always true, of course) that the premiere recordings of the two concertos by the artists for whom they were originally composed still convey a certain special authority. But if those performances establish the works as worthy additions to the Rautavaara canon, then these attest to their ongoing viability as repertoire items, and that's every bit as important.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The celebration of commonalties between widely divergent cultures is a fine thing. Here the commonality is Christianity as celebrated in both Africa and Argentina. In a world now politically guided by religiously inspired factionalism, this recording, ?Celebrating Sacred Rythms,? has a priori significance. If we can stretch its message to include the other sons of Abraham, the world may become a better place in which to live?in something more akin to harmony far beyond the mere musical sense of that word.


Back in the 1960s, the first recordings of the Missa luba and Misa criolla had a profound impact on my otherwise Eurocentric sensibility. Here we have fresh recordings of Argentinean composer Ariel Ramírez?s folk song-based settings of Navidad nuestra , and Misa criolla , both composed in 1964, as well as a new Missa luba .


This Missa luba , if it existed in a vacuum, would be fine. But compared to the wonderful recording of it made back in the 1960s by The Troubadours of King Baudouin under the direction of Guido Haazen (and currently available on Philips 475 6133), it falls short. It lacks the plangent sound of that quintessentially Congolese choir, and the percussionists get close to, but fail to nail their contributions to the sonic fabric by the smallest of margins. The two Ramírez pieces, however, come off splendidly.


Argentinean composer Ariel Ramírez was born in 1921. He melds his folk-inspired melodic sense with the demands of European choral conventions, and does it admirably. Some would categorize this as ?World Music.? I protest that. All music is World Music. It comes from the world, whether it be by Mozart, Brahms, Villa-Lobos, Steve Reich, or Radio Head, and when it is done well, it speaks to the world. The full title of Navidad nuestra describes it better than I can: ?Folk Drama of the Nativity, based on the Rhythms and Traditions of Hispanic America.? This is, with its underlying percussion ensemble, bracing and refreshing stuff.


The Misa criolla again comes in competition with the performance found on that aforementioned Philips release, this time by the Coral Salve de Laredo and the Sociedad Coral de Bilbao directed by José Ocejo. Their tenor soloist is José Carreras, before his bout with leukemia. He is indeed in fine voice, floating some exquisite head voice pianissimos. In this Naxos reading, the solo tenor part has been arranged for three tenors in various combinations. It works well. Manuel Melendez, José Sacin, and Pablo Talamante impart a welcome rawness to the proceedings. One can, in terms of tempo and phrasing, lay this reading right on top of the Philips effort, and the fit would be almost perfect. The performers are both in the same groove. One slight nit to pick: in the Gloria of the Philips version, the underlying harmonies hint at the Bolivian tune Nevando esta , and those performers employ what sounds like Bolivian bass flutes?an effect that is only approximated in the Naxos account.


In the end, this is a worthy offering. Texts and translations are not provided, but can be accessed online at www.naxos.com/libretti/navidadnuestra.htm.


FANFARE: William Zagorski

REVIEWS:
New York Times (Publisher) (4/7/00, p.E6) - "...this Hungarian period-instrument group produces a rounded timbre, closer to that of modern instruments. In addition...Terey-Smith also favors relaxed tempos, but this preference exacts no cost in vibrancy or...sheer rambunctiousness..."

This disc should be of interest to anyone the least interested in baroque opera.

Jean-Philippe Rameau was granted a long life: he was born two years before Bach and Handel and survived them both, Handel by five years. He spent his early career as organist and his compositions were mostly for keyboard instruments, primarily harpsichord. Not until he was fifty did he start writing operas, his first success being Hippolyte et Aricie in 1733. The works he wrote during the next twenty years are regarded as the cream of French Baroque opera, Castor et Pollux (1737, revised 1754) possibly his masterwork. His music became unfashionable towards the end of his life but in our time, from the 1960s, many of them have been revived and recorded. I remember hearing a performance of Castor et Pollux on Swedish Radio in the early 1970s, conducted by Harnoncourt, who later recorded the work with the same forces in Stockholm with Gerard Souzay as Pollux. That recording that still ranks high in the Rameau stakes.

On this disc the renowned French haute-contre Jean-Paul Fouchécourt sings a number of arias from eight of Rameau’s stage-works, which can be divided in tragedies lyriques, comedies lyriques and comedies-ballets. The term ‘haute-contre’ should not be confused with ‘counter-tenor’. The latter is a man who sings falsetto in the contralto range while the haute-contre is a high tenor who sings in his natural voice from e to c’’.

The arias on this disc have been chosen to represent Fouchécourt’s great predecessor Pierre de Jélyotte (1713–1797) who sang at the Paris Opéra from 1733 to his retirement in 1755, where he performed 46 characters in 41 works. One of his first assignments was two characters at the premiere of Rameau’s first opera Hippolyte et Aricie and he was given roles in thirteen of the sixteen stage works that Rameau mounted during this period. Nobody knows what he sounded like but contemporary reports say that it was a powerful and supple voice with a wide range. What did ‘powerful’ mean in those days? Certainly not the same thing as today, where powerful means a voice that can ride a Wagnerian orchestra or challenge Verdi’s Aida trumpets. Knowing the music Rameau wrote for him and the orchestral forces he had to compete with one can probably conclude that in today’s terminology it was a lyric voice and that Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is a worthy stand-in for him. Beauty, flexibility and virtuosity were more important components in a singer’s armoury during the 18th century than sheer force.

Hearing Fouchécourt almost twenty years ago I remember him as a very light voiced singer, agile and with beautiful tone. When he recorded Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice in the 1774 Paris version for Naxos five years ago with the same orchestra and conductor (see review) his was still a marvellously handsome voice, in my view an ideal instrument for the part. Four years later, when this disc was recorded, his technical accomplishment is still without reproach, his runs are exemplary and grace notes are applied with the utmost elegance. His soft singing is also very attractive but it seems that he has lost something of the suppleness of tone. It has hardened and he has to work harder than before with a slight widening of vibrato on sustained notes at forte. Today he sounds more like a character tenor, which isn’t as negative as it might seem. This is namely one of the most expressive baroque recitals I have come across. He makes the words tell and he colours the voice accordingly to good theatrical effect. Conveying a character or a situation with vocal means alone is a hard task for any singer or actor but Fouchécourt’s singing has ‘face’.

Ryan Brown and his Opera Lafayette also contribute to make this a highly desirable disc. Besides the aforementioned Orphée he also made a successful recording of Sacchini’s Oedipe some time ago (see review) and since several of the works here are ballets he has rich opportunities to let the orchestra shine – which it does with rhythmic flair, precision and elegance and also in the elegiac numbers he keeps the music alive. There are some spectacular sound effects in Platée (tr. 3, near the end) where the stage instruction says: “… suddenly a great clap of thunder is heard. A shower of fire falls from heaven. Platée runs about the stage in great fright.” If you happen to nod during this long scene – which to be sure seems improbable – you will certainly be woken up!

Musically this is a string of pearls of wonderful scenes with dances and arias, joyful, dramatic, elegiac, beautiful. For a taster of Fouchécourt’s accomplishment try the little arietta from Platée – Quittez nymphes, quittez (tr. 2), where his expertise in coloratura as well as his expressive colouring of the voice are to the fore. Also lend an ear to the elegiac aria from Castor et Pollux (tr. 6) and Neptune’s beautiful aria from Naïs (tr. 12): Cessez de ravager la terre, which has less to do with topical problems like global heating and devastation of the rain-forests than the eternal plague of war.

Ideally one could have wished that this disc had been recorded a couple of years earlier when Fouchécourt’s voice was in even better shape but his deep insight compensates for what loss of tonal quality there is.

Full marks to Naxos for providing not only full texts and translations but also an introduction to each scene with some historical notes and then placing the aria in context.

This disc should be of interest to anyone the least interested in baroque opera.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

RAMEAU: Harpsichord Music, Vol. 2

This is the 1754 revision of Rameau's 1737 masterpiece. The earlier version was coolly received as a result of the Lulliste-Ramiste battles that were waged at that time (Rameau was the new opera composer in town and, in subject matter and harmonies, was breaking with tradition). The revised version slims down the original: the allegorical prologue is gone; Castor and Pollux no longer compete for the same woman (Telaire); the first act is new, and the rest of the action is tightened, with some new music added. Whichever version you hear is good enough--it's a beautiful, moving work--and this set complements William Christie's performance of the 1737 original on Harmonia Mundi.

The most beautiful performance here comes from Monica Whicher as Telaire. Everything she sings is filled with meaning, her tone is lovely, and in her big aria, "Tristes apprets", she scales her voice down with great expressivity at key points. And the bassoon that plays obbligato around her is as mournful as her words and sound. Colin Ainsworth is an excellent Castor, his high tenor never quite entering falsetto but nevertheless exhibiting a mastery of voix-mixte. Contrasting nicely with him is the baritone Pollux of Joshua Hopkins, dark and throbbing, with a fine ear for natural French phrasing. Meredith Hall sings Phébé and Hébé with passion and celestial beauty, respectively.


While Kevin Mallon's leadership and the singing and playing of his Opera in Concert chorus and Aradia Ensemble are expert, as I listened I felt that there was a certain "snap" missing. Mallon sculpts the work almost in an Italian fashion, smoothly and with long legato, and this does something to Rameau's dance rhythms and the sharp attacks they need. But this may be only a personal gripe; in all, and at this price, this recording should be added to the collection of every French Baroque opera lover. [7/14/2004]
--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com