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Arthur Honegger (Composer), Jacques Ibert (Composer), Robert Whitney (Conductor), Jorge Mester (Conductor), Louisville Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Louisville Orchestra
• Conductor: Robert Whitney, Jorge Mester
• Composer: Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert
• Audio CD (October 18, 2005)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: First Edition
• ASIN: B000B6N6FY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,441 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars rare stuff by Honegger and Ibert, November 13, 2007

By 

Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Français Moderne (Audio CD)

As I wrote in my review of First Edition Music's collection of Louisville Orchestra-performed compositions by six Polish 20th Century composers(Polski Nowoczesny), there is (or was, as alas the company seems to have ceased its operations) a genuine, clever, sensible, cultured and musical mind at work behind these reissues. They represent a welcome break with the time-honored Louisville tradition, as they present highly coherent programs that fit snugly in one's music library. For all that the Louisville LP releases brought to the recorded legacy of 20th Century music of all schools and styles, one of their drawbacks was their motley programs and apparent haphazard bringing together on a single LP (or CD in the late 1980s and early 1990s) of composers with hardly any stylistic or personal ties. When First Edition acquired and started re-releasing the Louisville catalog in the early 2000s, they did so in the form of monographs, discs devoted to a single composer, collating Louisville recordings made at different times and thus usually offering fine overviews of the composer's development. In some of them, obviously for lack of material in the Louisville catalog, the total time was disappointingly short, anywhere between 40 and 50-minutes, but, at the cheap price demanded for them on the present site, that was a small downside in the face of the coherence and interest of the compilations.

But what to do when there wasn't enough music of a composer in the Louisville catalog to fill even that? Well, the mastermind in charge of artistic decisions at First Edition has cleverly and tastefully gathered four well-filled collections devoted respectively to British Modern (with compositions of Addison, Arnold, Bliss and the superb Improvisation for Violin and Orchestra of Rubbra), Polski nowaczesny (see above), Magyar Modern (Kodaly, Antal Dorati as composer and Mathias Seiber) and this one.

The two Honegger compositions here included are not among the composer's most famous and typical, but their interest lies precisely in the fact that they are seldom-performed and recorded pieces of their author. The Prelude to Aglavaine et Sélysette (1917) is Honegger's first orchestra composition, and is couched in a language reminiscent of Debussy's Pelleas - not unfittingly, as the play is also one by Maeterlinck.

Suite Archaïque is a late piece (1951) and a Louisville commission. The hallmarks of Honegger's most serious style are present. The outer movements are slow-moving, brooding chorales with trumpet solo in the first. The second movement ("Pantomime") is interesting and quite typical with its flute flatter tongue effects and sardonic trumpet, the 3rd movement ("Ritournelle et Serenade") displays a plaintive solo cello harking back to the cello concerto, whose line is then picked up by solo violin.

It was fitting to pair Ibert (1890-1962) with Honegger (1892-1955), as both composers belong the same generation. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was the composition that first brought public notice on Ibert when it was premiered in 1922 by the Concerts Colonne under Gabriel Pierné. It is a substantial composition (25+ minutes), deploying all the resources of a musical impressionism in a style reminiscent of Ravel's Daphnis or Dukas' Sorcerer Apprentice rather than Debussy (although there are whiffs of La Mer in the 3rd movement). The mood is sombre and dramatic as befits the subject, but with escapes evocative of the Day's Awakening in Ravel's Daphnis & Chloé (8:37 into the first movement for instance), as if the prisoner Oscar Wilde was gazing through the window of his cell, with dreams of liberty. Good 1973 stereo sound.

The 1958 Bacchanale - a Louisville commission - is to Ibert what the Sabre Dance from the ballet Gayaneh is to Khachaturian. As with the Armenian composer's warhorse, it is a flashy and vulgar showpiece. Surprisingly, though the 1970 stereo sound is quite good, I hear slight clicks, as if the transfer had been dubbed from an LP rather than, as stated in the production info, directly from the master tapes. But it is nothing you will notice without headsets.

The 1953 Louisville Concerto is again a Louisville commission and was one of the earliest Louisville releases (545-5), part of a batch in 1954 that included twelve LPs (Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky's pioneering Rhapsodic Variations for Tape and Orchestra was on the same LP - brave Louisvillians and brave Robert Whitney, and what a great tribute to Louisville's eclecticism). The Concerto is a boisterous orchestral showpiece, going through a variety of moods and colors in typical Ibert style, but the mono 1954 tape doesn't allow to fully enjoy its colors, all the more so as it appears somewhat worn, with a constant left-right channel fluttering.

As with the other discs mentioned above this one is well-filled (67+), and has fine notes, including those from the original LPs. This release was labelled "français moderne 1". If my suspicion is right that First Edition Music has now folded, it is sad to thing of all the rare French music - Jolivet's Suite Transocéane, Koechlin's Cinq Chorals dans les modes du Moyen Age and Partita, Sauguet's Les Trois Lys, Poulenc's Deux Marches et Un Intermède - that will remain hidden in the Louisville vaults and second-hand LP sellers.

And a postscript from January 2012: good news/bad news. The good news is that Louisville and the Santa Fe Music Group are back in business, and they seem to have finally released the complete Louisville catalog. The bad news is that it is on download only. Go to downloads and type Louisville Soundmark, it yields 58 results, some the straight reissues of the corresponding CD, but most new (and clever) compilations.