Varèse is a key figure in twentieth
century music. Not only is he known
as the ‘father of electronic music’
he also met and received support from
the likes of Debussy, Busoni and Richard
Strauss. Among writers and artists he
earned the admiration of Pablo Picasso,
Romain Rolland and Karl Muck.
Clearly a musical renegade from the
outset Varèse was reputed to have said
to Saint-Saëns: ‘I have no desire to
become a powdered wig like you.’ Far
from being the kiss of death such remarks
only seem to have enhanced his reputation
as an enfant terrible in French
musical circles. And his modernity is
amply reflected in his fascination with
the evolving world of science and new
musical instruments, such as the theremin
As technology developed Varèse embraced
electronic sounds, most famously in
his Poème electronique, written
for the Philips pavilion at the 1958
Brussels World Fair. I heard a realisation
of that on LP in the 1970s and was won
over by its mixture of the bold and
the bizarre. What an extraordinary experience
that must have been, to walk through
Le Corbusier’s labyrinthine structure
enveloped by electronic sounds from
400 strategically placed speakers.
Varèse has fared quite well on disc,
with Pierre Boulez recording some pieces
for CBS (now Sony Classical) and, more
recently, for DG. Devotees will probably
have the award-winning set from Riccardo
Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw
(Decca 475 4872), although Kent Nagano’s
not-quite-complete French survey on
Erato’s Apex label (2564 62087-2) is
well worth sampling too.
British-born conductor/composer Christopher
Lyndon-Gee is new to me but he has an
established track record with 20th-century
music, having worked with some notable
musicians, including Leonard Bernstein
and Bruno Maderna. His first Varèse
disc (Naxos 8.554820) has been well
received and it looks like this project
will be a winner. But how does it compare
with the Chailly and Nagano sets?
There is some debate about when Varèse
started work on Amériques but
it’s likely he began it before his first
trip to the USA in 1915. In any event
it’s his ‘New World’ symphony, written
for a mammoth orchestra of around 155
players. Nagano opts for the slimmed-down
1927 version, whereas Lyndon-Gee and
Chailly revert to the more revelatory
original.
Lyndon-Gee’s Amériques is clear
and bright, perhaps too much so, Nagano’s
much warmer and more resonant. I prefer
the latter because it treats the work
as an extended symphonic movement, whereas
Lyndon-Gee’s reading is apt to sound
like a series of discrete sound ‘episodes’.
Also, the Erato/Apex acoustic creates
a much more interesting and colourful
sound palette, with percussive detail
and wailing sirens very well recorded.
Of course Nagano’s is the revised version,
so the comparison isn’t strictly valid,
but still I find his performance much
more compelling.
Varèse attended the controversial premiers
of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps
in 1913 and some of the rhythmic ideas
in Amériques can surely be traced
back to that most atavistic of scores;
just sample the passage beginning at
3:00 and you’ll hear the startling similarities.
For all its raw energy the Naxos recording
is too fierce for my tastes and some
of the instruments, such as the lion’s
roar, sound too much like effects from
Godzilla or Alien v Predator.
Still, those percussion-led glissandi
at 19:00 are terrifying and the sffff
climax will earn you an ASBO, so play
it with caution.
Neither recording is in the same league
as Chailly’s. Apart from the collaboration
and support of Varèse scholar and expert
Chou Wen-chung, Chailly’s set also offers
a superb recording and a deeply committed
performance from a top-notch band. The
detail and weight are astonishing –
those eruptions and cascades in Amériques
simply seismic – and there’s a real
sense of something new and revolutionary
unfolding here. As with Nagano, Chailly
gives the music structure and coherence,
scoring over Lyndon-Gee in terms of
integration and refinement as well.
This is the kind of music that can all
too easily become a wall of sound, as
it does under Lyndon-Gee, and most listeners
will surely be grateful for the more
natural, three-dimensional Erato/Apex
and Decca recordings.
For all its primitivism Amériques
has a rival in Ecuatorial, inspired
by a sacred Mayan text called Popol
Vuh. Varèse calls for men’s voices
and a variety of singing styles, including
humming, mumbling and Sprechstimme.
He also wanted the Russsian inventor
Léon Thérémin to provide him with a
modified instrument with a range three
octaves higher than the highest note
of a piccolo. Unfortunately this project
never materialised, so Varèse substituted
two ondes martenots instead.
Under Lyndon-Gee the sinuous sound of
the ondes and the interjections of the
Silesian basses make for a potent brew,
made even more hallucinogenic by the
bright, forward sound. Once again Nagano’s
is a more penetrating and cohesive performance.
He and Chailly also use a solo bass
instead of a chorus, which gives the
score a more personal, human dimension.
Nagano’s ondes are pretty impressive
but even more so are the two hybrid
ondes/theremins provided for Chailly.
In the latter the disembodied sound
of these instruments, the bass incantations
and the scarifying percussion create
a unique mix of colours and timbres.
It’s less driven than Lyndon-Gee’s performance
but it’s none the worse for that.
It’s clear at this point that we have
three very different approaches to these
scores; Lyndon-Gee is unashamedly up
front, aggressive even, and he doesn’t
uncover the details that Nagano and
Chailly’s more meticulous readings do.
Of course it depends what you want from
this music, but it strikes me that Nagano
and Chailly offer a more rounded view
of Varèse’s art.
Nocturnal must surely qualify
as one of the strangest of Varèse’s
strange works. Left unfinished on the
composer’s death and completed by Chou
Wen-chung, this work calls for nonsense
syllables from the men’s chorus and
a soprano who sings phrases and extracts
from Anaïs Nin’s The House of Incest,
about a daughter who is raped by her
father and takes revenge on him as an
adult. It’s a bizarre juxtaposition
of ideas and something that only Varèse
could hope to pull off. As it was the
1961 premiere under Robert Craft was
a difficult, piecemeal affair. In terms
of its sound world it’s darker, sparer
and more chamber-like in its scoring.
Both Elizabeth Watts on Naxos and Phyllis
Bryn-Julson on Erato/Apex do the best
they can with these vocal off-cuts but
for once Lyndon-Gee makes a better case
for this work than Nagano does.
In contrast Sarah Leonard and the Men
of the Prague Philharmonic are altogether
more intense and incisive, Chailly drawing
vivid playing from his orchestra. There’s
an extraordinary fusion of voices and
music that is most telling, Leonard’s
steady soprano creating a real frisson
of excitement. Despite the work’s fragmented
structure Chailly alone gives it narrative
strength. Not the composer’s finest
hour, perhaps, but I doubt you’ll hear
a more persuasive performance than this.
Dance for Burgess, was originally
intended as a cinematic montage of music
and dance for Burgess Meredith, but
when that project fell through Meredith
persuaded Varèse to provide a piece
for a musical called Happy as Larry
that closed after just one performance.
This item isn’t included on Nagano’s
survey so it’s left to Lyndon-Gee and
Chailly to slug it out. Oddly for music
of this nature Chailly gives it a hint
of danceability, jauntiness even, that
Lyndon-Gee doesn’t quite manage. Not
exactly a hummable Broadway hit but
a piquant little number nonetheless.
The self-explanatory Tuning Up, also
missing from Nagano’s set, is given
a typically bright performance by Lyndon-Gee
and his Polish forces. It’s an odd piece,
a parody of an orchestra tuning up and
intended for use in a 1947 film called
Carnegie Hall. In the event –
and much to Varèse’s irritation – this
‘serious’ piece was treated as a bit
of slapstick. Lyndon-Gee plays it tongue
in cheek – or so it seems – but Chailly,
ever the straight man, gives a more
sober, committed performance of the
kind Varèse might have envisaged. As
ever, the Decca acoustic is much warmer
and more atmospheric than the fatiguing,
rather one-dimensional, Naxos one.
That said, Lyndon-Gee certainly grabs
your attention with an orchestral earthquake
at the start of Hyperprism, for
strings, nine wind instruments and percussion.
The brass and squealing flutes are very
prominent but then that’s typical of
Lyndon-Gee’s approach throughout. Still,
one can’t deny it’s arresting stuff;
indeed, it makes Nagano sound rather
dull and diffuse by comparison, although
the latter does bring out the score’s
more unusual colours. Chailly strikes
a sensible balance between dynamics
and detail; the opening is weighty but
doesn’t register too high on the Richter
scale, and the projection of flutes
and percussion is more lifelike, not
to mention easier on the ear.
The bright Naxos sound is also a problem
in Un grand sommeil noir, the
only one of Varèse’s early works to
survive. A Verlaine setting for soprano
and piano it makes a striking contrast
with the other works on this disc, such
is its outward simplicity and inner
feeling. Elizabeth Watts sings eloquently
enough but her voice has a razored edge
at times. And although Lyndon-Gee’s
piano is more naturally recorded this
makes for uncomfortable listening. Chailly
has a more subtle and sensitive singer
in Mireille Delunsch, but his version
isn’t strictly comparable as it uses
a specially commissioned – surprisingly
subtle – orchestration.
Towards the end of my marathon listening
session I came to dread the Naxos disc,
so I was pleasantly surprised by the
warmth and character of Maria Grochowska’s
flute playing in Density 21.5.
Written for the platinum flute of French
flautist Georges Barrère it’s a rather
lovely work, haunting and plaintive
by turns. I did rather enjoy Grochowska’s
performance, although Nagano’s flautist,
Philippe Pierlot, is less ‘breathy’
and more virtuosic. Chailly’s flautist,
Jacques Zoon, is the purest of the three,
with an otherworldly tone that is very
appealing indeed.
The final item on the disc, Ionisation,
is written for 13 percussion instruments,
its rhythmic cells combining horizontally
and vertically to create a three-dimensional
musical structure. It’s as motoric as
this composer gets, the last 17 bars
a long ‘fade’ to bells, tam-tam and
suspended cymbal. Lyndon-Gee’s performance
is one of his best, crisp, detailed
and dynamically well calibrated. Nagano
is rhythmically less propulsive but
makes up for that by highlighting the
work’s different sonorities. As usual,
Chailly strikes a good balance between
detail and momentum, the subatomic flares
superbly realised.
Lyndon-Gee just isn’t competitive when
pitted against Nagano and Chailly. His
recording is a major drawback because
it overemphasises the sheer brutishness
of Varèse’s work without revealing its
many subtleties. With the possible exception
of Density 21.5 and Ionisation
this disc must yield to the competition
is almost every way. Indeed, if I had
to choose a single Varèse collection
for my desert island it would be Chailly’s;
the sound is some of Decca’s best, the
readings are imaginative and the exhaustive
liner-notes are provided by Chou Wen-chung
himself. It’s also the most complete
survey so far, and as a twofer – the
original set I own is no longer available
– it’s very competitively priced too.
Dan Morgan
Note from Paul Serotsky
Both Dan Morgan and Carla
Rees, in their reviews of Vol. 2
of the Naxos series of Varese orchestral
works, make the same small but significant
error (possibly copied from the CD booklet?).
"Ionisation" is not for 13
percussion (instruments), but for 37
percussion played by 13 percussionists.
Incidentally, what a superb little
piece it is - and all the more so because
Varese did not rest content with a mere
rhapsody of "sound effects",
but cast it in what amounts to an "atonal"
sonata form. Now, that's what I call
"neat"!
Elizabeth Watts (soprano; 3 & 7) 
