Customer Reviews

Modern French Masterpieces- Milhaud, Roussel, Honegger

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Every conductor has a public image, and Bernstein's was formed around everything that seems un-French. He isn't known for delicacy, precision, finesse, or Gallic dryness. But he was Koussevitzky's heir apparent, and this recordig shows just how wonderful he oculd be in Frnech music, like his mentor. The Roussel Third, the best of that composer's galvanic symphonies, was commissioned by the BSO under Koussevitzky and has never received a more charismatic performance than this one from 1961, which raises the roof. The 20-bit remastered sound is vivid and full of impact--it rivals anything produced today.

The major work here is a little-performed Milhaud choral work, Les Choephores (The Libation Bearers), taken from Greek drama, which competes with Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in style while retelling the same story as Strauss's Elektra. There's no contest, really, with those two masterpieces on musical grounds, but the Milhaud is probably his best large-scale work. The real star is non-musical: Vera Zorina narrating the tale of revenge and murder in spoken verse set to a rhythmic percussion background. Milhaud could never completely escape the breezy, cabaret-inflected idiom of Les Six, however, and at times what should be violent sounds more like a rumba. Never mind -- Zorina is riveting, and so is Bernstein's propulsive, thoroughly committed conducting. Once again the sound is all but perfect.

Finally we get two short "symphonic movements" by Honegger. The first, "Pacific 231," which portrays a steam locomotive of the same name getting underway and speeding down the tracks, was a famous bit of machine-age music in its day. Honegger didn't want to be known for such glib program music, but that didn't stop him from composing the second work, "Rugby," inspired by a sports match. In both works, along with everything else on this disc, Bernstein shows how thoroughly he can make French music his own wihtout distortion, just added passion and warmth. The deluxe packaging by Masterworks Heritage, a reissue series that Sony soon made defunct, is like a souvenir of a lost era and includes an affectionate and all too brief remembrance of Bernstein by his longtime producer, John McClure.

If the performance of the Roussel on this CD is the same as that on the 1964 LP--grab it!!! That is purely and simply the best recording of a Roussel symphony ever made. It is a large-scale interpretation, like Bernstein's versions of the late Haydn symphonies, and enhances our view of Roussel's capabilities. It puts Symphony No. 3 nearly on an equal footing with Roussel's greatest masterpiece, Bacchus and Ariane.