Choices, choices. Determined upon expressing the brilliance of
the BIPO their young Austrian Chief Conductor, Sascha Goetzel
and the Onyx label opted for variety. The selection of repertoire
has been made across the range of composers and includes one eruptive
choral and orchestral work. This may well draw in new listeners
with a taste for mysterious eastern fragrances. It may be of more
limited interest to those already devotees of Respighi and Schmitt.
Probably the best known piece here is the Hindemith with its raucous
and wistful qualities strongly emphasised. The
Turandot movement
intensely aided by a recording of towering presence. The two outer
movements cannot cast off their Germanic cheerfulness complete
with Mahlerian trills and shrills in the
Marsch finale.
Goetzel and Onyx also reached out to the French exotic Schmitt
and the luscious Belkis extravaganza by Respighi. In the background,
especially with these last two one can sense the presence of Rimsky-Korsakov.
The short
War Dance in Belkis speaks of savagery as indeed
does the whirling and stomping
Orgiastic Dance. Clearly
Respighi felt other influences and we can hear Ravel in unblushing
Bolero mode in
The Dance of Belkis at Dawn. The
Schmitt is in six movements and is dedicated to Stravinsky. It’s
certainly something you need to hear if you are already avid for
Rimsky’s
Antar and
Scheherazade, Stravinsky’s
Firebird,
Ravel’s
Daphnis, Bax’s
Spring Fire, Biarent’s
Contes
d’Orient. The episode titles faithfully lead you to expect
something akin to
Antar and that is what you get. The bejewelled
Prelude leads on to the suavely strolling
Dance of the
Pearls.
The Enchantments of the Sea recall both Debussy
and Gaubert. The horn calls remind me of the similar calls in
Delius’s magical music for Flecker’s
Hassan. The Dances
of Lightning and Fear (trs. 12-14) start rather contentedly with
full capital made of the cavernous presence of the BIPO acoustic
and then develop a splenetic elemental stamping fury.
The balance is cinematic spectacular and the notes by Carenza
Hugh-Jones are good.
I do hope that Onyx will continue the series and will resist the
temptation to return the BIPO and Mr Goetzel to familiar waters.
Why not an all-Schmitt disc including
Selamlik,
Kermesse,
Danse d’Abisaig,
Cancunik and from the other end
of Schmitt’s life his cello concerto in all but name the superb
1952
Introit, récit et congé for cello and orchestra. I
find it inexplicable that cellists and the companies are ignoring
this commandingly imaginative piece.
Imaginative choice of repertoire, spectacular recording and the
promise, I hope, of more to come.
Rob Barnett
Nick Barnard also listened to this disc but without being
told anything about it.
This is quite an unusual disc. It arrived as a ‘double-blind’
disc with neither repertoire or performers listed. There are
three works on this disc – two of which I was able to identify
straight away. The third tickled away in my mind for a couple
of days until by a process of elimination and digging out some
of my own discs I was able to nail that down too. The three
works make for a slightly unusual programme – 20th
Century Showpieces for orchestra would fit the bill and there
is an underlying link of pseudo-easternism in the narrative
of two of the works at least (which is more or less reflected
in some of the orchestral effects). All the works have been
recorded before but this would seem to be a unique coupling.
The disc opens with the four movement suite Respighi drew from
his Ballet Belkis, Queen of Sheba that he wrote in 1930-31
for La Scala. Respighi clearly had quite a penchant for the
overwhelmingly spectacular and extreme but even by his own Festivals
of Rome standards this is a pretty over the top work. It
always sounds to me as though it was written for one of those
Hollywood Biblical Epics – if Respighi have lived in Hollywood
twenty years later Miklos Rozsa and Alfred Newman would have
been out of a job. Subtle it is not. There have been two previous
recordings that I know of both of which have emphasised the
sonic spectacular element. Indeed the debut recording on Chandos
won the 1986 Gramophone award for engineering and featured Geoffrey
Simon conducting the Philharmonia. From memory I have an inkling
that was one of Chandos’ first recordings in All Saints Tooting
(London) and it ushered in a new era of ‘hi-fi’ resonant recordings.
The fact it is still available today some 25 years at effectively
full price proves its longevity. The other competing performance
came out only 3 or so years back on Prof Johnson Reference Recordings
from the excellent Minnesota Orchestra. In turn that was nominated
for an engineering Grammy. So how does this new recording measure
up? Well as far as the Respighi is concerned pretty well. The
engineering is not a patch on either of the above but this almost
helps the performance – it reminds me of a latter day Decca
Phase 2 recording – very spread on the sound stage left to right
but relatively shallow front to back set in a big acoustic.
The sound is big bold, very unsubtle, with odd highlighting
of instruments but then that’s how the music is too. No way
do the strings of this orchestra have the tonal refinement of
the Philharmonia but conversely the wild solo clarinet in the
2nd movement War Dance is far more idiomatic
here – the British clarinettist sounding positively polite in
such company. Likewise the ‘ethnic’ percussion instruments here
– I’ve no idea exactly what Respighi has called for in the score
– have a far more authentic timbre and indeed style of playing
on the current disc. What I do enjoy throughout the programme
is the orchestra’s total commitment. This doesn’t sound like
an ‘expensive’ orchestra and I’d put money on it not being a
famous one but as so often it proves there is quality to be
found in unlikely places. In the past I’ve always enjoyed returning
to the Chandos disc as a rather guilty hedonistic pleasure but
this performance runs it very close for spirit and verve. Ultimately
the sheer collective power of the Philharmonia and the skill
of the engineering pushes me towards that earlier version.
With the second work we are entering a far more crowded and
competitive field. This is the Symphonic Metamorphoses on
Themes by Weber by Hindemith. This is probably that composer’s
most popular work and the one which most definitely ridicules
the perception of him as some arid academic composer. I’ve never
understood that charge – his music bristles with wit and energy
and life. Apparently, the initial stimulus for the work was
a suggestion by Leonid Massine for a ballet based on Weber’s
music. Hindemith decided he liked Weber’s music but not Massine’s
choreography hence the orchestral work we got. Many of the themes
Hindemith used are from Weber’s incidental music to Turandot
so perhaps we are getting close to 2 possible threads for
this disc’s programme; ballet and near/far eastern narratives?
Unfortunately, the combination of brash recording and unsubtle
playing which benefitted the Respighi works against the Hindemith.
This is a very hard work to play well. Nothing here is poor
– far from it but the spirit of the music is not caught well.
After all this is Weber’s music metamorphosised through Hindemith’s
20th Century vision. It does need to retain the essential
elegance and bonhomie of the original even when the percussion
and brass are running riot. On this disc those sections are
rather unleashed. Its here that the internal balance within
the orchestra as well as the engineered balance lets things
down. The strings have to work too hard, or at least they sound
as if they are working too hard, trying to toss off Hindemith’s
knotty little figurations. Certainly compared to any of the
classic recordings this sounds provincial. My own particular
favourite is the Szell/Cleveland recording on Sony which can
still be found (intelligently coupled with the Walton/Hindemith
Variations) with a bit of hunting around but that highlights
what an extraordinary instrument the Cleveland orchestra
was in Szell’s hands. Not to everyone’s taste for sure but it
make’s this work a the archetypal orchestral showpiece.
So, coming into the home straight honours are pretty much even
with this disc. The third work is another ‘exotic’ ballet and
although it has been recorded before (more times than the Respighi
I think) it is in many ways the rarest work here. Mainly because
it’s composer – Florent Schmitt – never wrote any works that
have entered any kind of popular consciousness. If one work
was going to fulfil that role it would be this one; La Tragédie
de Salomé, Op.50 premiered in November 1907. Given that
this is barely 2 years after the cause célèbre Richard Strauss’
Salome it is not really that surprising that this work should
have fallen into the other’s shadow. Schmitt’s work was conceived
as a ballet (written for a chamber orchestra of 22 players)
and runs for about an hour. It has been recorded in this form
on Marco Polo. Schmitt returned to the score two or so years
later, cut about half of the material and rescored for a large
full orchestra and it became a kind of choreographic poem. The
original ballet was deemed a great success after the premiere
receiving over fifty performances and being described by Stravinsky
as “..one of the greatest masterpieces of modern music”. Loath
as I am to play the ‘sounds-like’ card; in this fully orchestral
version it does sound like an opulent Straussian tone poem with
a distinctly Gallic twist. – a kind of Also Sprach Daphnis perhaps!
Flippancy apart it interesting to note that Ravel began work
on his great ballet at exactly the same time Schmidt was transforming
his score.
I’ve commended readers before to the IMSLP site – there it is
possible to view for free Schmitt’s score: imslp.org/wiki/La_Tragédie_de_Salomé,_Op.50_(Schmitt,_Florent).
This is the most successful piece overall on the disc. The highly
charged sensual nature of the music is performed to the hilt
and the work benefits from this kind of committed playing without
requiring the clockwork precision of the Hindemith. As a piece
it is much more substantial than the Respighi which for all
its spectacle is ultimately rather a display of empty bombast.
This work provides the orchestra with a much more impressive
musical calling-card. I have in my collection both the previously
mentioned Marco Polo original complete ballet and a recording
of this full orchestral version from Marek Janowksi and the
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France which is now available
on bargain price Apex . There is also a version on Hyperion
which I have not heard. This version I prefer to Janowski because
it does abandon itself to the sensual sound world of both the
composer and the narrative. However, it should be pointed out
that the couplings on both Apex and Hyperion are more Schmidt
as opposed to the potential for repertoire doubling this disc
risks. The engineering seems to have become a little subtler
and indeed so has the interpretation. The Respighi is a fairly
unsubtle beast so best just to unleash the players as is done
here. The Hindemith is performed at fairly standard tempi but
in a too perfunctory manner with little wit or grace. However,
in the Schmidt, the conductor seems more attuned to the hyper-romantic
style and follows the indicated ebbs and flows of the score
well. Although better I still find the recording to be somewhat
brash – slightly in the style of early digital recordings where
the dynamic range was undoubtedly impressive but lacked nuance.
Track 10 is the section of the score called Danse de Perles
and it is a good example of the style of performance throughout
this work. This movement is a swiftly moving 3/8 swirling dance.
When the dynamics expand the orchestra do so with alacrity,
although I do wonder if a little too eagerly. I suspect something
more lithe and sinuous in the playing might be closer to the
original intent – this feels more athletic than erotic. But
I should stress it is exciting all the same. I do feel the synthetic
instrumental balance undermines the quieter reflective passages.
Good though it is that the inner parts are so audible their
level in the mix is unrealistically high and thereby destroys
much of the atmosphere. As the musical temperature rises so
the string ensemble suffers. There are passages where the beat
flows around barlines in a deliberately disruptive manner, it
feels as if some of the players are not completely comfortable
with this idiom and the playing becomes effortful rather than
energised. The recording uses the instrumental option of solo
oboe or flute when the score asks for off-stage female voices.
Its an understandable choice no doubt made on economic grounds
but a pity all the same. The wordless female voice there is
by definition more sensual and provocative than any instrumental
counterpart and does add to the drama of the moment considerably
(particularly when marked ‘avec lassitude’). However, the following
Danse des Éclairs is viscerally exciting and what it lacks in
absolute precise ensemble it makes up for in excitement and
total engagement by the players. I mentioned before this version
is scored for large orchestra amongst which Schmitt asks for
a sarusophone as opposed to the more usual contra-bassoon (Bax
does the same in his early symphonies). Certainly the instrument
here is full of character – I’m not sure if it is a contra or
not. Generally woodwind solos are well taken without having
the last drop of personality (the clarinet mentioned before
is an honourable exception). The work is brought to a suitably
dramatic close by a return of the powerful uneven meters of
the Danse de l'effroi and it proves to be an exciting conclusion
to the disc.
Following a score of any work can be something of a revelation
and often not to the benefit of a recording – you often notice
things covered by the mix or fudged in performance. I have to
say that is something of the case here. This is a complex and
by definition unfamiliar work. I’m guessing this must be some
kind of ‘debut’ disc by this orchestra – it has the feel of
being a demonstration/presentation disc. The choice of unusual
virtuosic repertoire would suggest an attempt to make an impact
on the musical stage. Overall, it’s a pretty good effort and
one that listeners who enjoy spectacle in their music will have
fun with. In the tough world of classical music you would have
to say each piece is available elsewhere – I see the Hyperion
disc does use the female voices (on reflection a serious omission
here) and given their track record you would have assume it
will be an impressive disc – so we are left with a disc for
the curious but not a compulsory purchase.
Nick Barnard
The
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra/Sascha Goetzel 
