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Dutilleux: Complete Orchestral Works

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There is an unfinished quality to much contemporary classical music. For some composers, their pieces are studies for larger works ( ever in progress ), others revel in a fragmented brilliance, an apparently purposeful lack of purpose. Amidst these ( variously valuable ) diversions, there exist creators working in what I term the "authentic" classical tradition, striving for artistic achievement that lasts beyond the confines of the zeitgeist. These individualists operate in an aesthetic mode set apart from both the hidebound rules of nostalgic conservatism and the perpetual fragmentation of avant-garde radicalism. Henri Dutilleux ( born 1916 ) certainly is an individualistic composer.

Given the sensual, quasi-exotic beauty of his music, is it natural to link Dutilleux with the great French "impressionists". Music critics have for years mentioned a connection with Ravel but aside from perfection of craftsmanship, a much more convincing link can be made to the mysterious metamorphosis exemplified in the sound world of Claude Debussy. And, however strong his ties to an essentially Gallic refinement, Dutilleux has also quite clearly profited from familiarity with Bartok, Stravinsky, and Webern.

Henri Dutilleux reached musical maturity during the heyday of serialism, a style which the composer admits was an influence but which also had negative attributes ( "cultural terrorism" is how he characterized the fanatical side of the movement ). His own music defies easy categorization; it is unquestionably "modern" yet noticeably part of the European classical tradition. No matter how complex the harmony or orchestration, a sense of forward momentum and classically influenced "inevitability" is felt throughout his pieces. A seamless blend of the traditional and innovative caused an admiring contemporary ( Messiaen, another influence on Dutilleux ) to remark that the younger composer was in some ways more, in other ways less "advanced" than himself.

His 1st Symphony ( 1951 ) is a work of great skill but doesn't prefigure his mature work as much as his 2nd Symphony of 1959, which is full of Dutilleux "trademarks": plaintive, upward-spiraling figures on woodwinds and the use of "reverse variation" ( whereby the theme is revealed only at the end of the piece ). His composition from 1965, "Metaboles", a set of five interconnected orchestral episodes, prefigures his work in the more ambitious Cello Concerto of 1970 ( subtitled "Tout un Monde Lontain..." ). Similarly, "Timbres, Espace, Mouvement" (1978) has a strong influence on the orchestral textures of the Violin Concerto of 1985 ( "L'Arbre des Songes" ) .

As far as this 3 CD set is concerned, potential purchasers can be confident that the performances and engineering are excellent. However, I strongly recommend that interested listeners seek out the recordings of the cello and violin concertos featuring the dedicatees. Rostropovich's version is coupled with the Lutoslawski Concerto and Isaac Stern's recording is coupled with the Violin Concerto of Peter Maxwell-Davies.

The reason to buy this boxed set is not to acquire new, definitive interpretations of much represented music; it is to become acquainted with a composer who has had no prior integral recording. That is justification enough. The music of Henri Dutilleux (born 1916) manages to be unmistakably "modern" without being the slightest bit doctrinaire or off-putting: Dutilleux's roots go down deeply into the impressionist soil of Claude Debussy, although unlike Debussy, Dutilleux shows an interest in polyphonic complexity rather than in chord-based harmonic color as such. In addition, Dutilleux's structures usually correspond to what one can call "the symphonic" in a way that Debussy rarely essayed: and indeed his first two orchestral scores were symphonies (1951 and 1959). Like many composers in the aftermath of World War Two who refused to embrace the procedures of the "Second Viennese School," Dutilleux found himself somewhat marginalized. While Dutilleux received performances and commissions and was recorded over the years, he never enjoyed the cachet of, say, Pierre Boulez. In an essay on "The Symphony in France," published in "Paths to Modern Music" (1971), the astute Laurence Davies had to plead for Dutilleux, "a much underestimated composer outside his own country" whose "brilliantly clear textures" make his Second Symphony (subtitled "The Double") "an astounding achievement." On record, Rostropovich played the Cello Concerto and Stern his Violin Concerto; other works have been recorded here and there. The neglect is largely made up for in Yan Pascal Tortelier's comprehensive four-disc survey for Chandos, illustrated appropriately on the jewel-box and on the pamphlet by van Gogh's "Starry Night." On CD 1, Tortelier pairs the two symphonies. Davies valued the Second over the First Symphony, although he admitted the virtues of the latter, particularly its opening Passacaglia. The musical language of the First Symphony is close (by way of a known reference) to Frank Martin's: intensely chromatic without abandoning tonality. (Dutilleux's Passacaglia resembles Martin's free-standing endeavor of the same name in its full-orchestra version, available on a Chandos CD under Matthias Bamert). The two inner movements are a colorful Scherzo and a darkly colored slow movement. The Finale, like the First Movement, is a theme with variations - virtually a second passacaglia, but wider ranging in its moods than the First Movement. The Second Symphony pits a small orchestra of about ten instruments, including harpsichord and celesta, against the full orchestra, hence the appellation of "The Double." I imagine that this is a difficult score to record, as the spatial element resists transcribed representation. That said, this three-movement work is quite as fascinating and beautiful as its precursor. On CD 2, Tortelier gives us Dutilleux's Violin Concerto, "L'arbre des songes" ("The Tree of Dreams" [1985]), in a sequence of uninterrupted movements proper and interludes. This is Dutilleux the mystic, sharing certain penchants with Olivier Messiaen, although never sounding brash or vulgar, as Messiaen sometimes does. "The Tree of Dreams" is music for late-night listening. The "Two Sonnets by Jean Cassou" for baritone and orchestra, dating from the 1940s, show the composer working in a tradition of French orchestral song going back to Hector Berlioz and his "Nuits d'été." The score called "Timbres, espace, et mouvement avec interlude" (1978) takes its inspiration from van Gogh's "Starry Night." It depicts the awe of stellar delirium effectively - less wildly than Messiaen, be it said - yet with some strange and novel sounds. "Métaboles" (1964), on CD 3, again shows some kinship with Martin (think of "The Four Elements") and gives the impression of a symphony by another name. The Cello Concerto, entitled "Tout un monde lointain" (difficult convincingly to translate into English: "A Whole World Far Away"), is another essay in religious yearning and phantasmagoria. Like Berlioz, Dutilleux has a gift for melody: the concerto-format lets him exploit his talent, allotting the "singing role" to the solo instrument and supporting the solo line in a delicate web of hallucinatory accompaniment. The descriptive title comes from one of the Baudelaire poems that the concerto purports to "interpret." This is another link to Berlioz, who made one of the earliest settings of Baudelaire. "Delicacy" and "exquisiteness" are adjective that come to mind insistently as one listens to Dutilleux's music. One thinks of them as French traits par excellence. They appear again in "Mystère de l'instant," a quasi-concerto for cimbalom and strings - by no means so odd as it might seem. On CD 4, Tortelier gives us "The Shadows of Time" (1995), for voice and orchestra, which shows Dutilleux refining his mode of expression even further toward the seamless and translucent. With one minor quibble, I recommend this boxed set. The quibble is the shortness of the fourth disc. Chandos could easily have added a performance of Dutilleux's string quartet, "Ainsi la nuit," which would have turned a stinting measure into a fair one. Discs 1 - 3 are well filled.

With the death of Messiaen a few years ago, France has only Dutilleux and Boulez as it's remaining grey eminences musically. Of the two, Dutilleaux is the less well known, partly because he has been hardly prolific (he is a merciless critic of his own work) and because Boulez has a greater genius for self-promotion.This complete collection should go a long way to securing Dutilleux's reputation as one of the finest French composers of the last half of the 20th century.

This CD is a collectin of all of the orchestral works by Dutilleux. they span his entire career, from the 1st symphony of 1951 to The Shadows of Time, from 1997. Not all of the works on the disc are masterpieces, but many are, including the marvelous Cello concerto from 1970, Tout un monde lontain, the Violin concerto and the Shadows of Time. Dutilleux's world is a mix of shadow and light, neither atonal nor tonal. He has the same interest in sonority as Messiaen, but is more traditional and craftsmanlike. The music is clearly in the French Impressionist tradition, yet it is allusive and fleeting. almost haunting really.

Performances here are expert. Tortelier conducts marvelously and the soloists are all expert.

This is an essential disc for fans of modern French music.

Because he's so quiet, and his music isn't as controversial as certain other post WWII french composers who will remain nameless *cough*, Dutilleux's tiny, immaculate reperatory does not get nearly the attention it deserves, and that's a damn shame.

Anyway, to keep it short, "The Shadows of Time" is one of the great triumphs of contemporary music and even as a broke musician I would have paid the admission fee just for this one (this recording is the best of the four available, too, though I'm sure better ones will come). Not to overshadow the rest of the music though, because this is a helluvalotta damn good, damn pretty, damn imaginative music.

This collection is a must for anyone who likes contemporary music--or early 20th century and wants to stretch there ears just a bit. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

After hearing Henri Dutilleux for the first time ("The Shadow of Time") on a recent NPR broadcast, I immediately ordered his complete orchestral works, available on this four CD set. I am not disappointed. His music is very accessible and deserves a much wider audience. I highly recommend this set.

I own, and cherish, my copy of Musikkens Verden, a Norwegian music encyclopedia published in 1950 (long before I was born, in other words). It isn't a very comprehensive encyclopedia, but remarkable for the fact that it contains interviews with a few hundred contemporaneous composers considered the most important at the time (they did miss some important ones, to be sure). The minor point, though, is that (apart from some then very young Norwegian composers, who were more exhaustively covered) sixty years later, Dutilleux is as far as I can tell the last interviewee still alive (Elliott Carter wasn't included). In 1950 he was a promising composer with a few exciting and remarkable works to his name such as the piano sonata. He has certainly lived up to that early promise, and the set at hand - three discs of his orchestral music (not quite complete), consistently superbly performed - is a thoroughly valuable addition to the catalogue.

The first disc is probably the most important of them. Dutilleux composed his two symphonies in 1951 and 1959, respectively, and both works belong to a tradition developed from Ravel and Honegger even though the finale of the second reveals a more modernist disposition. Both works are crammed with interesting and memorable ideas, developed with refinement and mastery, and both works display a powerful sweep and almost epic dimension in their - different - quests for tonal resolution (which the second never quite reaches). They are texturally rich (the second also deploys a group of twelve soloists), and the Chandos recording team might have taken a risk when providing such an opulent sound, but it works almost perfectly (even though certain details are lost in the second symphony). More importantly, the BBC Philharmonic is on top form throughout, and Yan Pascal Tortelier a superb advocate, not afraid to let the music breathe but still remaining rhythmically taut and providing all the spirit and dramatic tensions the music demands.

For the second disc we turn to far later works. Timbres, espace, mouvement was composed in 1978 but revised in 1991, and is a superb work - in many ways it might be considered a third symphony, despite the fact that it eschews traditional symphonic development and symphonic structure. It is a glittering, almost pictorial - even balletic - score, and even if Tortelier and the BBC might take a relatively cautious approach, they certainly realize the brilliant textures and impressionistic qualities of the music (although they certainly don't have the final word on this one). The violin concerto from 1985 is also given in a slightly low-key manner, but the possible lack of drama is compensated for by the magical textures and songful flow of the music; that of course demands a lot from Charlier, the BBC Philharmonic and Tortelier, but to my mind they succeed almost completely. The disc also includes the two gorgeous and sumptuously orchestrated Cassou sonnets and a delectable arrangement of Alain's Priere.

The cello concerto has already achieved almost classic status, and Pergamentschikov is as good an advocate as you could hope for. His approach is perhaps shorn of extrovert drama and superficial brilliance, playing up a more symphonic image of the music. Metaboles is a tricky work to bring off, but Tortelier apparently has a complete grasp of it, providing a sustained development and wonderfully shaped climaxes (but is it just a little bit monotonous sounding?). I am less sure I really manage to fully appreciate Mystére de l'instant, which sounds to me as a somewhat less interesting cousin of Metaboles; it is still a glittering score, relatively introvert but still with a certain dramatic flair. Again, the BBC Philharmonic plays the music superbly, and they are led with skill and thoughtfulness. The sound is excellent as always.

The set also contains a bonus disc of Tortelier's recording of Dutilleux's most recent work, The Shadows of Time (not among the originally released separate issues); again Tortelier fully captures the magic of Dutilleux's sound world while at the same time having a clear view of the work's overall structure. In short, this is a remarkable and important set. If I were to recommend a single disc I might be inclined to go for the one containing the symphonies (especially for those who are relatively unfamiliar with the composer), but the whole set is indeed very strongly recommended.

Henri Dutilleux is a composer I instantly took to when I heard a powerful piano sonata played by a fellow music student. Atonal, but not cerebral or meandering enough to lose the ear. There was a romantic passion to the music that compelled the listener to stay with it. His orchestral music is quite the same.

Don't be fooled by the title of these CDs, however. Dutilleux is still with us, so this is definitely NOT a "complete" compilation of his orchestral works. But it is an excellent introduction.

The playing on these recordings contributes nicely to the vastness of the sound, emphasizing the colorful harmonies, as well as the stylish (and very French) modern sonorities. I'm an even bigger Dutilleux fanatique than before. Bon appétit!

Henri Dutilleux has contributed a modest but remarkably beautiful and striking body of music to the 20th Century. Many of his core works have been gathered on this anthology, all of which inhabit a unique sound world of luminous colour and ambiguous shadow, with a clarity of musical organisation reflecting the composer's meticulous approach to his art. The BBC Philharmonic under Tortelier give pointedly refined, incisive and atmospheric accounts of these works. The recorded sound is admirably clear and detailed, if slightly recessed. It is a shame that a greater number of anthologies documenting the work of important 20th/21st C composers are not being more readily released. Any fan of french music -or- great 20th C music must definitely obtain a copy of this.

Dutilleux
BBC Phiharmonic
Yan Pascal Tortelier
CHANDOS

CD 1
Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 2 'Le double'
Recording 1992

CD 2
L'arbre des songes
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Olivier Charlier, violin

Two Sonnets by Jean Cassou
Neal Davies, baritone

Timbres, espace, mouvement avec inerlude

Jehan Alain (1911 - 1940)
orch. Dutilleux
Prière pour nous autre charnels
Martyn Hill, tenor
Neal Davies, baritone
Recording 1996

CD 3
Métaboles

Tout un monde lointain
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Boris Pergamenschikow, cello

Mystère de l'instant (grande formation)
Edward Cervenka, cimbalom
Recording 1997

CD 4
The Shadows of Time (1995 - 7)
Edward Burrowes, treble
Recording 1998

I didn't like Hans Graf's Dutilleux selection very much, so I bought Jan Pascal Tortelier's (virtuoso cellist Paul Tortelier's eldest son). But I, who have become accustomed to listening to an excellent recording of the music of the 20th century with a huge sound of my hi-fis, do not like the sound of Tortelier's selection, though I think the Tortelier's performance is better than Hans Graf's. I think, the recording producer and the engineer didn't it well (because the recording is not too old). Or, is it because of the orchestra? Only "The Shadows of Time" of CD 4 is a good live recording.

How can Chandos clain this to be a complete orchestral collection when they leave out his ballet, <Le Loup>. Ok. There are dancers on stage, but it is a full orchestra that plays it, and it has yet to see the light of day completely recorded anywhere.
Shame on Chandos for overlooking this.