Milhaud: Les Choéphores / Honegger: Symphony No. 5 / Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane

Darius Milhaud (Composer), Arthur Honegger (Composer), Albert Roussel (Composer), Igor Markevitch (Conductor), Paris Orchestre Lamoureux (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Paris Orchestre Lamoureux
• Conductor: Igor Markevitch
• Composer: Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Albert Roussel
• Audio CD (June 10, 1997)
• SPARS Code: ADD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records / Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000001GXH
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,652 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fois gras, August 4, 2000

By 

Mark McCue (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Milhaud: Les Choéphores / Honegger: Symphony No. 5 / Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane (Audio CD)

These stupendous performances, showing the great Markevitch at his best, date from the late 50s and have been coveted in various DG, Epic, US Decca vinyl guises for years and years.

As an artist, Markevitch was true caviar--his mania for quality in material and orchestral execution was well-known and sometimes led to grumpiness from musicians who thought he was a slave-driver. Nevertheless, the musicians of the Lamoureux elected him as conductor and -- poof -- the orchestra went immediately to a golden age. Not since Paul Paray had the musicians had so much celebrity.

They play like it here. All these works are a bear to play, but what exudes from this disk is a supreme sense of confidence and surrender to the conductor. The Chorephores is a moving work with music in utter service of text--Markevitch has it worked in so closely that the blandishments of the words sound almost like a psychological examination. The performances from which this recording stems were runaway critical successes in Paris and it was hard to get tickets. The Brasseur Chorus, always a crack outfit, outdoes itself in tone, mimicry, rythmic attention.

The B & A is one of the great readings: listen to the incredible wind and brass execution as it runs the gamut from ppp to fff without any loss in tone or character in the vibrato. Markevitch keeps everything within the realm of dance: rythms are strong but not clompy, tonal beauty is never sacrificed in favor of volume, the ebb and flow is so natural that you forget how many tempo changes the score has. It's masterful beyond words. Those who feel Martinon in Chicago was the end-all in this piece had better listen to this-the CSO can and has been outplayed, more often than not in French music.

And the Di Tre Re: Possibly Honegger's greatest work, it's never had greater advocacy than here. I'm not throwing out my Munch or Ansermet, but Markevitch and the Lamoureux impart a luminous, transluscent quality to the work, in a great part due to superior execution (the orchestra has done it under a number of conductors). Dating from 1960, it's a wonder more maestri haven't taken a cue from this performance and programmed the work more often. One answer may be: it's hard and takes a lot of guts and fortitude to come up with a magnificent performance as the Lamoureux has here.

All in all, if you love Milhaud, Roussel, Honegger...this is a classic disk with virtues so overpowering that it's unique on the market today.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars French modernism at its most ambitious, in historical mono recordings, June 11, 2011

By 

Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Milhaud: Les Choéphores / Honegger: Symphony No. 5 / Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane (Audio CD)

DG released these three prime examples of Parisian modernism in 1957 (Milhaud and Honegger) and 1960 (Roussel), late enough that it's fairly inexplicable why all are monaural. I am as enthusiastic about Markevitch's performance as the two previous reviewers, but realistically this CD is for listeners with a special interest in the period between the wars when all three composers were at the peak of their reputations. Even though Honegger's Sym. #5 was composed in 1950, this music evokes the rich artistic culture that was once Paris. The Second World War ended French dominance in all the arts. As composers, Boulez and Messiaen were more important than any postwar French painter, but in truth the musical dominance of Paris beginning around 1910 depended on refugees and emigrants like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Copland and Koussevitzky.

Which is to say that Rouseel and Les Six seem today like minor figures; their brand of modernism couldn't compete with the Second Viennese School harmonically, and their talents were not on the scale of the great Russians. I imagine that DG's release of these historical recordings is due more to the latter-day cult around Igor Markevitch -- another Russian -- than the music itself. the Lamoureux orchestra's playing is flavorful and very Gallic, but for sheer ability the musicianship displays the depleted state of French orchestras until they were revived by forming new ensembles like the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre National de France. Expect squeaky woodwinds and thin strings, not helped by thinness in the recording as well.

and the scores? Two are based on Greek mythology, Les Chorephores (The Libation Bearers) being an oratorio that takes off from Aeschylus's treatment of the story of Elektra and Orestes, the same one that Strauss made his opera from, while Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane is based on the same story that Strauss used for another opera, Ariadne auf Naxos. The French versions are not masterpieces, but their composers employ the devices of modernism, including motor rhythms, primitivist sounds in the percussion, jagged mottoes instead of melody, modal harmonies, and of course, dissonance. Honegger's symphony, tightly arranged in its formal construction, has the subtitle "Di Tre Re," referring to three drumbeats on the note D (Re in Italian). The very truncated program notes make a case for this music being an anguished response to the bleakness of the postwar world under the shadow of the Bomb, but Honegger can't escape his roots, and the middle movement twitters and dithers away in the usual mode of Poulenc or Milhaud. The finale features agitated, mechanized motor rhythms, reminding us of Honeggger's famous homage to the locomotive, Pacific 231. Only the first movement, marked Grave, seems to me like an outcry of anguish, although both outer movements are powerful.

Les Chorephores was also recorded, in stereo, by Leonard Bernstein, who himself felt the pull of Paris thanks to his teacher and mentor Aaron Copland. That reading, on a special Sony release, is better sung than Markevitch's, but even Bernstein's charisma can't surpass this DG release for sounding so purely French. The highlight of both recordings is the Exhortation, which features a fervent spoken narrative with interjections by a muttering chorus and percussion. The remaining movements have o special bearing on Greek tragedy and seem to me like Milhaud tying hard to be forceful, with moderate results.

Like the Suite no. 2 from Daphnis and Chloe, the second suite from Roussel's ballet begins near the en and gives us the climax, as Ariadne is visited on the island of Naxos by the god Bacchus, who kisses her and thus makes her immortal. Roussel's modernism has always struck me as sounding self-taught, and at its best it achieves an allure like the primitive-but-modern paintings of Rousseau. I don't think anyone will hear any particular match between this music and the Greek myth -- we are simply in Roussel's world, as we would be in any of his symphonies. If you like his idiom, this is a leading example, along with the Third Sym.

I don't mean to downplay the pleasure to be had from this CD, a one of a kind memento and valuable for that reason. All three works are among the most engaging of their composers. But I felt that earlier reviewers had oversold the scores and the playing of the Lamoureux Orchestra. Setting that aside, this is an intense dose of Parisian modernism at its most ambitious.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing performances of neglected masterworks, August 22, 2007

By 

Houyhnhnm "houyhnhnm" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Milhaud: Les Choéphores / Honegger: Symphony No. 5 / Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane (Audio CD)

The Darius Milhaud work on this CD gets my vote for his best serious work, and the most unjustly ignored work of the 20th century. But Markevitch doesn't ignore it; he provides an amazing interpretation. The fifth movement, the Exhortation, for emphatic narrator and chorus, with shouts and prominent percussion, is in a class by itself. This is dramatic choral music, indeed.

The sound on the album suffers a bit from the technology used at the time it was made. It is not modern. It doesn't do the performance complete justice. But it is not at all bad -- indeed, I'm listening to it on headphones as I type, and it does not detract much at all from the experience, something I cannot say for most recordings prior to 1960. (Stravinsky's remark about early recordings is perfect in most cases, if not this: "It sounds like music coming from a closet." But what about the new Hi-Fi? "Music coming from two closets.") Still, it is the greatness of the performance that make this recording a must-have.

Arthur Honegger's symphony is another gem, here. It is his most cerebral symphony, and Markevitch finds the right balance, bringing out the flurry of movement and color and motivic interest. It is too often maligned as the least successful of the composer's later symphonic works. Perhaps if those doing the bad-mouthing had heard this recording, the general opinion would be much higher. Indeed, after listening to this performance I upgraded the work to the peak of Honegger's output. It is, in its way, a perfect thing, a marvel of control and formal beauty.

I have little useful to say about the Albert Roussel work; I've never cared for the composer, and though this work is fine as it is, it doesn't move me. Others will no doubt disagree. But for me, it is the Milhaud performance that makes up the main course, the Honegger the dessert. The Roussel work is the doggie bag treat. (Roussel fans will hate me; c'est la vie.)