Flautists know Gaubert’s name. For them he wrote both didactic
music and display pieces as well as three sonatas and a Sonatine.
It will come as no surprise that he was a virtuoso of the flute
standing in succession to his teacher Taffanel.
The works featured
here repudiate the low expectations engendered by the enervation
of many of those flute solos. Here we are in the heartland
of the French late-romantic world.
The Symphony intrepidly
treads the line between Franck and impressionism. The first
movement is poetically restless with the motion of the waves
and the sea-swell. At least once the spinnaker shiver that
we hear in Louis Aubert's wonderful Breton sea portrait, Le
Tombeau de Chateaubriand (1948) can be heard. Then again
we hear shades of Debussy, Rimsky and Borodin. In this sense
there are affinities with the work of the Belgian tone poet,
Adolphe
Biarent. There are some warmly lambent flute solos -
as in the faun-like voices of the second movement. The scherzo
is cheery, fine-lined and light of foot. The finale underlines
the excellence of balance achieved by engineers Alain Jacquon
and Jeannot Mersch. The brass writing rings out with a mixture
of the imperious and the tragic. If the massed violins sometimes
sound a mite steely the principals deliver their solos with
sweet tenderness.
I first heard
the three movement Les Chants de la Mer in Gaubert's
own 1930 recording on Alpha 801 issued in 2006. Soustrot is
noticeably slower than the composer but one can the better
relish the delicate hues of this impressionistic writing.
It drifts in delight between the Franck of Psyche,
the Bax of Fand and Mediterranean and, inescapably
Debussy's La Mer. There is a sovereign weight to the
third and last movement as well as mystical communion with
far marine horizons. It is into the tremble and shimmer of
those horizons that the music finally evaporates. The Concerto
in F is in three movements the first two of which are radiant
with warm poetic feeling and transparent textures. The finale
skips smilingly along, Vif et léger in folksy style
and is rather like the scherzo of the Symphony. The work ends
in an exuberance that is both intricate and swept along with
panache.
Harry Halbreich
provides the programme notes - essential reading.
Indispensable
listening for adherents of the melodic-romantic nationalism.
You will now want to hear the other orchestral works: the
Violin Concerto, Pays Basque (1930), the choreographic
epic Alexandre le Grand, Les Fresques (1923)
and Inscriptions pour les portes de la ville (1934)
– the latter also featured in a vintage recording on that
Alpha disc.
Rob Barnett
Detailed tracklisting:
Symphonie (1935-36) [35:11]
1 – Lent, calme – Allegretto [12:47]
2 – Adagio [9:02]
3 – Scherzo : très vif et léger [4:35]
4 – Final [8:37]
Les Chants de la mer (1929) [17:25]
5 – Chants et parfums, mer colorée [8:10]
6 – La Ronde sur la falaise (Scherzo) [4:06]
7 – Là-bas, très loin, sur la mer [5:03]
Concert en fa (1932) [17:26]
8 – Lent, majestueux – Allegro moderato [7:18]
9 – Lent, doucement expressif – Tempo di minuetto [6:33]
10 – Vif et léger [3:29]