Those of us who
used to haunt specialist record shops in our glittering youth
will have fallen upon those rough and ready Louisville LPs with
as much alacrity as we dived on the latest vinyl-pitted, plastic-covered
Melodiya. I’m still waiting for some symphonic Miaskovsky to
appear to allow an upgrade but in the meantime here is something
just as good; revivification of those pioneering American recordings,
now appearing on First Edition with a panoply of recording information,
booklet notes (some reprinted from the original LPs) and well
restored sound.
The first I’ve come
across is this Milhaud disc, especially valuable inasmuch as
two were Louisville commissions. The Ouverture Méditerranéenne
was one such in 1953. Fulsome and warm, with effortless
string cantilever, and punchy trumpets this is the aural analogue
of a Matisse. The sound is rather brash and perspective-less
but the joie de vivre survives intact. Kentuckiana - Divertissement
on Twenty Kentucky Airs is a puckishly long-winded title
for this other Louisville commission. This is a fusion of a
testosterone-injected Grainger and some muscular Robert Russell
Bennett; enjoyable but not too serious.
The Cortège funèbre
is cut from different, pre-War cloth. It was originally written
for a Malraux film, Espoir. It has an appositely grim
sonority; polytonal, suspenseful, with a role for saxophone
that may remind one of La Creation du Monde - though
in this funereal context it’s more a matter of texture. A blaring
trumpet courses through, rather reminiscent of Honegger.
Quatre chansons
de Ronsard were premiered (and first recorded) by Lily Pons
and her husband Andre Kostelanetz in 1941. The Louisville recording
dates from 1974 and was conducted by Jorge Mester. Paula Seibel
has a light, forward sounding voice that occasionally struggles
with the tessitura. She’s particularly fine however over the
warm cushion and beneficent wind chording of the second song,
To Cupid, and in the vibrant melismas of the third. Listen
out too to the fine percussion, joyous affirmative vocal and
the slinky sax in the last of the four.
Which leaves the
Sixth Symphony of 1955, a four movement work joyeux et robuste
to cite Milhaud’s indication for the finale. His lyricism is
to fore with waltzing pizzicato in the first movement and a
larky ear for timbres in the second (note the sepulchral lower
brass). Perky winds and snarly trumpets add fizz to the texture
and there’s a warm but harmonically and timbrally active slow
movement, full of colour. The finale has strong roles for solo
violin and the winds but also some bracing and big tuttis.
There are competing
versions of some of these works (the symphonic cycle on CPO
will be on most adherents’ shelves by now) but First Edition
has done auspiciously here in returning these pioneering and
still impressive accounts to the catalogue.
Jonathan Woolf
Paula Seibel (soprano)
