Saint-Saëns’ 1896
ballet music for Javotte is recorded
here apparently complete on disc for
the first time. It’s a village romance,
light and airy, but dramatically pleasing
and sheds light on Saint-Saëns’
multi-faceted compositional talents.
The scenario was sent to him by J.L.
Croze and the composer was clearly spurred
to immediate work because he’d completed
the score within the year, although
it was to be over a decade before it
was mounted in Paris (Lyon had staged
it much earlier). From Scene I’s Ensemble
opening we encounter the composer whose
control of diaphanous and colourful
writing is Mendelssohnian in
its lightness and aptness. But in dramatic
terms he can cover a multitude of pertinent
compositional avenues, from the stern
fugato of the Entrance of the heroine,
Javotte to the aerial delicacy of the
first Pas de deux. The Scene I Bourée
is heavy and staunch but the succeeding
Départ pour les vêpres
is saturated in an exotic, Japanese
sound-world and the hero Jean’s arrival
is met with lighthearted nonchalance
complete with a bustling central section.
Saint-Saëns’ scoring
is perfectly aligned to the dictates
of this essentially optimistic frolic
and his boldness pays dividends in the
Scene II Pas de deux with its nascent
little ceremonial outburst as indeed
it does when depicting the escape music:
flurry of strings and bristle of horns.
Maybe the wittiest moments of all, and
there are a few, come in Scene III’s
Javotte concourt where the vibrancy
and wit coalesce in a very special way
– and one’s minds eye conjures the choreography
with great immediacy. There’s a typical
touch in Javotte, reine de la Danse
with its delicate cello solo, not quite
as evocative as The Swan, but in the
same vein.
We finish with a brief
example of Parysatis – a play staged
in 1902 with incidental music written
principally in Egypt the previous year.
The brief seven minute snippet recorded
here comprises the instrumental introduction
and three ballet scenes – but enough
to show his exotic way with the scoring
and the fine brassy writing in the last
of the scenes.
The performances are
fully equal to the music’s demands,
not that these are excessive. The Queensland
Orchestra, under the increasingly visible
figure of Andrew Mogrelia, plays with
charm and no little verve when demanded.
Jonathan Woolf
The Queensland Orchestra/Andrew Mogrelia 