Customer Reviews

Dutilleux: Metaboles; Mystere de l'instant - Concerto for cello & Orchestra

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Henri Dutilleux (b. 1916) has been the elder statesman of French music since Olivier Messiaen's passing (1908-1992). Dutilleux has never been prolific, but the quality of his small body of works is very high. He is a quintessentially French composer, obviously continuing in the vein of Debussy and Ravel with luscious orchestral textures and recurrent nocturnes with gauzy, oblique, fluid, drifting constructions. Dutilleux is a moderate modernist, maintaining continuity with the early 20th century and always maintaining a flowing, lyrical quality, reflecting his mystic vision of nature, even as he moves outside standard tonality.

There are two cyles of Dutilleux's orchestral music, this first one recorded from 1992 to 1997 for Chandos, with Yan Pascal Tortelier leading the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and one recorded for Arte Nova in 2000, 2001 and 2004 with Hans Graf leading the Bordeaux Aquitaine National Orchestra -- a French conductor leading an English orchestra, and an Austrian conductor leading a French orchestra.

Tortelier's cycle is superb, and seems to be more widely heard. Graf's Dutilleux is also excellent, and quite competitive with Tortelier. Graf enjoyed a close relationship with the composer as he recorded these works, which are sharper, more detailed and Boulezian than Tortelier's, while Tortelier's readings are smoother, deeper, and more mysterious. Neither has a world-class orchestra at his command, but both produce fine recordings that complement one another. As Stravinsky said, a score will allow for more than one interpretation.

This disc in the Tortelier/Chandos cycle includes three works:

Metaboles (1964 -- 16'37),
Tout un monde lontain for cello and orchestra (1967-70 -- 27'56), and
Mystere de l'Instant for 24 strings, Cimbalom and Percussion, grande formation (1954 -- 15'30).

"Metaboles" in five movements, written from 1962 to 1964, is one of Dutilleux's more radical pieces. This is about as far out as he gets! The third movement utilizes a 12-tone motif, and Dutilleux writes a series of freely morphing themes that return to the starting point without passing through a standard sonata form of development.

The cello concerto "Tout un monde lontain" (A Whole World Distant) was written for Mstislav Rostropovich, based on Baudelaire's "Les fleurs du mal." It is performed here by Boris Pergamenschikow. I do not find this recording as convincing as the one by Jean-Guihen Queyras in the Graf/Arte Nova cycle, which has a more forceful and vivid cello part. It moves through five movements (Enigme, Regard, Houles, Miroirs, Hymne), each associated with a short verse from the poet, concluding "...keep your dreams: wise men do not dream as blissfully as fools!"

"Mystere de l'Instant" is a lovely early work, most notable for its textures, so well captured by the title. It features the Hungarian cimbalom as well as solo lines for violin and cello, moving through ten short movements. Edward Cervenka is featured on cimbalom.

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