Edgard VARÈSE (1885-1965)
The Complete Works
Sarah Leonard (soprano), Mireille Delunsch (soprano), François Kerdoncuff (piano), Jacques Zoon (flute)
Men of the Prague Philharmonic Choir
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble/Riccardo Chailly
rec. 1992-98, Utrecht and Amsterdam, Netherlands
Presto CD
DECCA 475 487-2 [2 CDs: 150:36]
These two discs thoroughly packed in a single-width case bring back into circulation, through a licence given to Presto Classical, a Gramophone Awards Collection issued in this format in 1999. It was winner of the magazine’s “20th-Century Orchestral” category - a category that seems to have existed only in 1999. When the set first saw light of day (1994) it went under the Decca number: 460 2082. Riccardo Chailly, now associated with his Brahms, Mahler and Stravinsky, tended at that time to circulate in more recondite waters. Varèse fitted that profile: a composer known by reputation and historical significance rather than for the experience of hearing his music. Chailly was a pioneer in having dived into the Complete Works, but before him there were recordings by Boulez (DG and Sony), Lyndon-Gee (Naxos), Mehta (Decca), Craft, Jansons and Michael Tilson-Thomas, not to mention an item in a Turnabout Americana LP.
These two Decca discs are fairly tightly organised. CD 1 contains works predominantly for full orchestra (Concertgebouw). CD 2 sets out works mostly for large ensemble (ASKO). Everything is warmly taken down in acoustics that seem to swell to accommodate grand statements. The music is played and recorded for resounding impact whether it is quiet or loud. CD 1’s contents are from the large hall of the Concertgebouw, For CD 2, other venues are used. The results, which range across gleaming, whispering pianissimos to howling climaxes,
are ideal even after the passage of three decades.
The set is pretty much an elite product with good long silences between works and plentiful tracking. The 30-page booklet is in English only and comprises track-lists, an introduction to the project by Andrew Cornall (a legend in the Industry), and a survey of Varèse’s life by Ligeti pupil, Chou Wen-chung who also profiles each work in just enough detail. He also has a determining hand in completing various works and editing and revising several others. There are not many sung words in these scores but those that do are set out in the language in which they are sung and in translation.
All of this makes for an historic set quite apart from all the fluff of awards and celebrity. In that sense it is up there with the curiously neglected Tilson-Thomas’s 1980 Ruggles 2-LP set for Columbia Masterworks (M2 3451). This made it to CD but not via CBS-Sony. It’s still only available in CD format through the Other Minds label (2012) and the Amazon quoted price is fearful.
Back to Varèse, turning to CD 1. Tuning Up is a piece from 1947 with many familiar aspects of the Varèse vocabulary. It owes its existence to an edition constructed in 1998 by Chou Wen-chung and recording producer Andrew Cornall.
Not for the last time among Varèse’s works do we hear the thunderous influence of The Rite of Spring. This time it’s in Amériques (1918-21). It is heard here as edited by Chou Wen-Chung from the manuscript. At the most literal level it mixes furiously heaving plate tectonics, brusque guffaws, feral barbarity, conspiratorially tense silences and that trademark police siren (19:01).
Poème Electronique, with its gurgling, plonks and squeaks, is bound to make you think of the electronic score (by Bebe and Louis Barron) for the 1956 MGM movie Forbidden Planet. Chanting and the distant wailing of a soprano voice merged back into the canvas. This recording is taken from the original master by Konrad Boehmer and Kees Talezaar. It came into existence as a result of a commission by Philips of Eindhoven to be played through 40 loudspeakers at the Philips Pavilion part of the 1958 Worlds Fair in Brussels; the very same that hosted the Atomium. The Pavilion was a smoothly space-age, upward-sweeping Gothic Punk ‘cathedral’ of a building; half Kay Nielsen, half Gaudi. The designer of the Pavilion was Le Corbusier. Iannis Xenakis had a strong hand in the sound installation aspects.
Arcana includes a pretty frank imprint from Stravinsky’s Firebird as well as a passage of what I can only call muttering that was reminiscent of Steve Reich It’s Gonna Rain, which involved a repeated tape loop of two sentences from a San Francisco revivalist street preacher’s rant. I wonder what Stravinsky made of Arcana.
Nocturnal - Varèse’s last work and completed by Chou Wen-Chung - adds to the orchestra the men of the Prague Philharmonic Choir. At its close the piece seems to be juggling the very wisps of sound. The words and phrases uttered are from Anais Nin’s The House of Incest. The solo soprano in this dream-like score is Sarah Leonard. Its furies are contrasted with the quiet and wild slaloming of the violins like something from Hovhaness’s Fra Angelico overture.
The very atmospheric Un Grand Sommeil Noir is heard in the version orchestrated - on a commission from Chailly - by Anthony Beaumont (well known for his work in realising scores by Busoni and Zemlinsky and author of the Zemlinsky biography (Publ. Cornell, 2000). It’s a very approachable short song and it is most beautifully sung by Mireille Delunsch. The whole thing seems to be over and done with before it has started but not before you register what seems to be an evocation of a huge oar beat; echoes of Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead.
CD 2 opens with the superb Un Grand Sommeil Noir but now heard in the original soprano and piano form. Mireille Delunsch (soprano) and François Kerdoncuff (piano), both from Timpani (such a shame that label has gone the way of all flesh) are the musicians. Kerdoncuff has been the mainstay in so many Timpani revivals and Delunsch played a pivotal part in CDs of songs and operas by Ropartz, Duparc and Bloch.
The dreamy Offrandes - once again evocative of Debussy - explores the tension between the delicate flute and soprano Sarah Leonard. Leonard at track 3 [3.12] shows how she can quietly sustain a high note. Such endurance and, more to the point, such artistry. The two sections are: 1. ‘Chanson de Là-haut’ (poem by Vincente Huidobro) and 2. ‘La croix du sud’ (poem by José Juan Tablada).
Hyperprism - as revised by Richard Saks - is again short but emphatic. It rises to roiling activity but then makes a controlled collapse into calm and discreet piping.
Octandre, revised and edited by Chou Wen-Chung in 1980, is in three tracks: 1. Assez lent [2:43]; 2. Très vif et nerveux [1:46] and 3. Grave/Animé et jubilatoire [2:17]. It’s a jigsaw of episodes, commanding enough, but with ragged and sometimes raging edges. Along the way bereft woodwind cry out in yet another echo of The Rite. In closing, a low instrumental grumbling gives rise to pulsating fanfares.
Intégrales is again in a revised edition by Chou Wen-Chung. At times it sounds like the Mastermind theme, threat and urgency intertwined but ending in groaning protest.
Ecuatorial features Kevin Deas (bass) who sings the setting’s French words. They’re in the booklet in French and also in English translation. The ensemble includes a significant part for piano as well as two instruments that are a hybrid of ondes martenot and theremin. The piece ends in growling brass.
Ionisation is for 37 percussion (including siren) played by 13 percussionists. It explores the qualities of sound produced by unpitched artefacts. It tickles and sometime bludgeons the ear. A 1930s recording (the first one) was once available on a Symposium CD.
Density 21.5 is a short piece for flute - here played by Jacques Zoon. It’s subdivided into seven similarly short tracks. Like the works involving the human voice it seems passingly indebted to Debussy.
Déserts is scored for instrumental ensemble of twenty instrumentalists and a pre-recorded tape. The original recording was loaned to Chailly by Columbia University Computer Music Centre. The music is in four separately tracked parts with three “interpolations of organised sound”. It’s very “modern” with the electronic input unyielding and evoking thoughts of the Poème Electronique. The tape includes strange squeals and whoops like the whale-song of the type heard in Hovhaness’s … And God Created Great Whales or the recording of Heathcote Williams’ Whale Nation. Déserts here refers not just to desolate places like the Sahara but also to deserted lands and seas of all types, deserted streets and the physical deserts of sea, land and inner space.
I thought the Burgess referenced in the title of Dance for Burgess was novelist-composer Anthony Burgess. How wrong I was. It is in fact a short piece for a Burgess Meredith film and then associated with a musical. The film never happened and the musical folded very quickly. The Varèse piece was unused. It sounds like an off-cut from Déserts which was itself an offshoot from Espaces, another ultimately abandoned project. This biting shard of a Dance exists courtesy of Chou Wen-Chung’s creative editorial work. Along the way we get to hear fragments of voodoo drumming, screams and barks from the brass and, at the close (it’s only 1:48 in total), there’s a Stravinskian ice-breaking gesture
This is a well calculated primer and exegesis for Varèse. Here is a composer who often expresses himself like a steam engine which has flung off its cast-iron governor. The music bounds along with punctuations in the form of seductive whispers and thunder crashes.
This Presto reissue is well worth the revival. The retailer’s choice is
unerring. Presto’s name does not appear on the discs or the packaging
Rob Barnett
Contents
CD 1
Tuning up (1947 reconstr. ed. 1998) [4:54]
Amériques - original version (1918-21) [24:37]
Poème Electronique (1957-58) [8:02]
Arcana (1925-27) [18:21]
Nocturnal - edited and completed by Chou Wen-Chung (1951) [10:24]
Un grand sommeil noir (orch. version - soprano and orch.) (1906) [4:07]
CD 2
Un grand sommeil noir (original version - soprano and piano) (1906) [2:47]
Offrandes [6:51] (1921) [2.30]
Hyperprism (1922-23) [4:24]
Octandre (rev. & ed. Chou Wen-Chung, 1980) (1923) [6:46]
Intégrales (1924-25) [10:26]
Ecuatorial (1932-34) [11:33]
Ionisation (1929-31) [5:57]
Density 21.5 (1936) [4:05]
Déserts (for pre-recorded tape and instrumental ensemble) (1950-54) [24:21]
Dance for Burgess (1949) [1:52]
