Florent SCHMITT (1870-1958)
La Tragédie de Salomé, symphonic poem, Op.50 [26.32]
Musique sur l’eau, Op.33 [5.44]
Oriane et le Prince d’Amour, suite, Op.83bis [17.45]
Légende, Op.66 [10.23]
Susan Platts (mezzo-soprano), Nikki Chooi (violin)
Women’s Choir of Buffalo,
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
rec. Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, 4 March 2019 and 8 March 2020
NAXOS 8.574138 [60.39]
My first encounter with the music of Florent Schmitt came thanks to a 1970 RCA collection on an LP miscellany of French tone poems (the other music was by Duparc and Chausson), conducted by Antonio de Almeida. Hearing La Tragédie du Salomé (in the orchestral version) was an intoxicating experience, and even though the performance of an extremely difficult score sounded under-rehearsed (I imagine the New Philharmonia players were sight-reading) it left me anxious to hear more of a late romantic-impressionist composer whose music appeared to have disappeared from sight altogether. Some twenty years later another recording of the score appeared on Erato conducted by Marek Janowski, which was rather more securely played by a French orchestra but which adopted the economy measure of substituting for the optional offstage soprano soloist a choral rendition of the vocal lines. This newer version was coupled with a performance of Schmitt’s spectacular Psalm 47 which was ruined by an insensitive recorded balance which relegated the important organ part in the score to the middle distance (neither of these recordings appear to be currently listed as available). There was also a recording of the two same scores from Jean Martinon (available now only as part of a bumper 14-disc box; a mid-price EMI CD reissue jettisoned the recording of Salomé altogether). A vintage recording by the composer himself recorded in 1930 is of historical interest, although the choral contribution is entirely omitted and the scoring really clamours for full stereo sound.
Since then Marco Polo and its sister label Naxos have made somewhat of a speciality of La Tragédie du Salomé, furnishing us not only with this new recording of the orchestral version of the score but also with a reduction for piano solo, and a complete performance of the original ballet conducted by Patrick Davin in its scoring for chamber orchestra – a piece nearly twice as long. The smaller scale of the orchestration in that original sacrifices a fair amount (not as much as you might expect) in terms of sheer impact, but the textures are fascinating; and the ballet score deserves the attention of all Schmittophiles. It is perhaps surprising that nobody else has seen fit to give us the complete score as originally written; alternative versions, from conductors such as Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Sylvain Cambreling (all from the past decade or so), similarly restrict themselves to the ‘symphonic poem’.
Florent Schmitt himself is interesting as one of the French composers in the post-Debussian generation who clearly relished the rich orchestral palette of the impressionists but at the same time avoided the twin siren calls of neo-classicism and the irreverence of Les Six. Not that he was immune to the influence of Stravinsky; the final pages of Salomé in its 1910 revision have clear pre-echoes of The Rite of Spring, although the original score predates both that seminal masterwork and The Firebird (as did the exotic music of the even more obscure and mysterious Ernest Fanelli which Adriano espoused so enthusiastically for Marco Polo many years back). Schmitt’s later music tended to become even more grandiose, with decided echoes of Respighi in his incidental music to Antony and Cleopatra and a sense of splendour in Psalm 47 which looks forward to the more monumental style of early Messiaen.
If Naxos have made something of a feature of their Schmitt recordings, so too have JoAnn Faletta and her Buffalo orchestra, whose recording of Antony and Cleopatra I welcomed enthusiastically a few years ago. Here, apart from the better-known Tragédie and the suite from Oriane et le Prince d’Amour (which has been recorded once before), we have two world première recordings in the shape of Musique sur l’eau and the version of the Légende for violin and orchestra. The sound, as in the earlier Naxos disc, is warm and resonant – just the right sort of sound for Schmitt – and at the same time manages to bring out detail that could too easily submerge into a sort of sub-Straussian mush.
The Légende was originally written for alto saxophone and orchestra (as a commission from the same American player, Elise Hall, who simultaneously requested Debussy’s Rapsodie) but when published in 1920 the solo part was also given in a more elaborate version for viola, and this is shown as the preferred option (the saxophone is given as an alternative in brackets). Edward Yadzinsky in his booklet note states erroneously that this was a “transposed version”, whereas it is clear from the score that it was not. The version heard here, for violin, is clearly transposed upwards but otherwise the solo part remains as it was in the published and more elaborate version of the viola text. I must admit that, despite its origin as a saxophone work (and the lack of really good solo scores for that instrument, which clearly commends it to players), it works better in its string incarnation. Apart from the greater freedom for the instrument to soar into the upper register, there are also passages in the score where the saxophone is simply instructed to remain silent where the viola or violin can continue to engage with the orchestra. Nikki Chooi plays the extended lines with absolutely security, no mean feat in this elaborate music.
Musique sur l’eau is an exquisite miniature, a rather effusive comparison of the breath of the poet’s beloved with a symphony which in its overblown imagery conjures up impressionistic parallels with Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer. But it is quite brief, and in its short duration it lacks the melodic richness that makes Chausson’s outpouring of grief so irresistible. Susan Platts delivers the extended and long-drawn lines with perfect breath control, and the booklet supplies us with both the French original text and an English translation; but at the end of the day this is a delightful bonus rather than a principal reason for acquisition. Mind you, it is interesting to hear some of Schmitt’s solo vocal music which seems to be otherwise unrepresented in the catalogues.
The late ballet score Oriane et le Prince d’Amour is not one of Schmitt’s most prepossessing pieces, although it has its fair share of scintillating textures and richness to tempt the appetite. The problem arises with the rather odd form of this suite, with a comparatively short prelude and love scene followed by an extended sequence entitled Danse de mongols. In this latter section, which constitutes well over half the suite, Schmitt tackles an extended movement in predominantly 7/4 time, which might suggest parallels with some the exotic rhythms of Holst’s Beni Mora, The Perfect Fool or The Planets; but Schmitt lacks Holst’s easy familiarity with unorthodox rhythms, and the occasional slips back into straightforward 6/4 or common time serve simply to underline his basic unease with rhythmic freedoms which he had earlier commanded so convincingly. The alternative recording from 2018, conducted by Pierre Stoll, is effectively outclassed by the superiority of Falletta’s orchestral players here; but at the end of the day this is not a score like his earlier Salomé and Antoine which convinces the listener of the composer’s command of exoticism. One might perhaps have been more persuaded if the summary of the balletic plot, a bizarre sort of cross-fertilisation of Turandot and the Arabian Nights, had actually made sense; it doesn’t, at least as summarised in the booklet here.
These booklet notes by Edward Tadzinski are not among Naxos’s best; apart from his misleading comment on the transposition of the Légende, he also manages to garble his comparison of the balletic plot of Salomé with the Biblical story. It is, I fear, simply not true that after her dance “in the well-known New Testament passage, John the Baptist rushes forward to cover her with a monk’s cloak”, which is simply an invention of the choreographer. The writer’s discussion of the same score concludes with the statement “The orchestral timbres are likewise in virtual transition, as the hues of symphonic palette seem to be ephemeral at every next measure. C’est magnifique!” The same notes are also provided in French, where the translator has not felt the urge to treat the language in quite such a cavalier fashion.
One textual quibble with the recording of La tragédie du Salome. Some way into the second ‘scene’ Schmitt asks for the introduction of wordless offstage female voices, beginning with a solo soprano, adding a second soprano at nearer quarters, and finally expanding to a group of three or six closer again to the stage, providing a series of variations on a traditional folksong from the Dead Sea. Now it would seem that the composer’s intentions are made expressly clear in the score, and it is a surprise to find how many conductors seem altogether to miss the point. On older recordings, both Marek Janowski and Jean Martinon transfer the whole part to a female chorus (Sylvain Cambreling makes the same mistake), which not only blurs the outline of the folksong when we first hear it but also loses the sense of impending doom as the voices grow in strength and presence. Yannick Nézet-Séguin leaves out the voices altogether, employing the suggested instrumental substitutes that Schmitt places in small type in his score and employed on his set of 78s (a 1960 recording by Paul Paray does the same); and of the versions I have heard only Yan-Pascal Tortelier on Chandos seems to employ female voices in the specified number, and gains immeasurably thereby. Here JoAnn Falletta properly assigns the opening statement of the folksong to a solo voice, but then the mezzo-soprano Susan Platts is placed far too close to the microphone and actually is more prominent in tone than the choral voices that take over her line later on (when they are supposed to be louder). I am unconvinced that this is how the music sounded in the hall – the engineering of the voice here lacks the resonant warmth provided for the orchestra, or indeed for Platts herself in the Musique sur l’eau – and perhaps it might be appropriate to reconsider the balancing of the recording at this point? This is particularly regrettable when elsewhere the competing demands of acoustic bloom and instrumental clarity are so well judged.
Were it not for that caveat, I would have no hesitation in recommending this CD as now the best available recording of the principal work here; and the other three items are hors concours, two being otherwise unobtainable and the third comprehensively outclassing the opposition. As it is, the disc still remains highly enjoyable and should surely make more converts for music that deserves to be much better known than it is.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
