Normally I can’t
use a comparison recording of a brand new work, but, well,
if Anthony Payne can write Elgar’s
Third Symphony,
André Mathieu/Gilles Bellemare can write Rachmaninov’s
Piano
Concerto No. 2½. Why ask silly questions? Just enjoy
it. Rachmaninov would; he is reputed to have said that
Mathieu was “a genius, more so than I.” Play it for your
friends and tell them it’s Rachmaninov; they’ll never catch
on.
Composer Mathieu, “le
petit Mozart canadien,” was born in Montreal, Canada, to
musician parents. He was in every way precocious and began
writing music very early. In 1946 he went to Paris to study
with Honegger, but the association did not flower and upon
his return to Montreal in 1947 Mathieu’s mood and health
began a steady decline. He wrote much music and played
in public a great deal, but did not survive his thirties,
the most dangerous years for a composer it would seem,
dying of the effects of alcoholism in 1968. Since then
he has been something of a Quebeçois hero, his music being
played frequently, much of it requiring orchestration after
transcription from primitive solo recordings. Gilles Bellemare
and Alain Lefèvre have been at the centre of this activity.
Conductor Hanson met pianist Lefèvre in Europe more or
less accidentally where they collaborated with much success
in the Grieg
Concerto and subsequently planned these
concerts and recordings.
This is also the
Tucson Symphony’s debut recording, and a very auspicious
debut it is indeed. They sound marvellous, and the recorded
sound, recorded at 24 bit, is stupendous. Music Director
Hanson conducts with tremendous energy; he was a student
of Bernstein, has won an award for a recording of Rubinstein,
and has worked with the Atlanta Symphony and New York Philharmonic
orchestras. He has conducted over 90 orchestras in 19 countries,
was Music Director of the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra
in Germany, and of the Anchorage Alaska Symphony Orchestra
from 1994 to 1999 before coming to Tucson in 1996. Pianist
Lefèvre gives us all the huge, rich sound and rhapsodic
phrasing required for Rachmaninov … or Mathieu. He has
previously recorded Mathieu’s
Concerto de Québec on
the Analekta label (see his
website for more information).
The
Scènes
de Ballet are closer to early Debussy in style and
scope; they are engaging but not substantial. The first
three,
Berceuse,
Complaint,
Dans les
Champs are pastoral pantomimes perhaps leaning towards
the style of D’Indy. The fourth,
Danse des espiègles,
is real dance music with the usual difficulty of being
repetitive and sacrificing dramatic substance for keeping
a clear beat.
The four songs,
also somewhat insubstantial, were originally for solo voice,
the first one to a poem by the composer, the next two by
Paul Verlaine, and the fourth by Jean LaForêt. They are
charming and very French in style, the chorus mostly forming
an atmospheric background to the instruments, briefly coming
forward to make a dramatic statement. Having sung in a
chorus, I can tell you that the Tucson Symphony chorus
does a fine job with them providing just the vapidity the
music deserves. The
Concerto is the overriding reason
one would buy this disk.
This recording
would make a fine gift for a friend who likes Rachmaninov
and regrets that he didn’t write more music.
On the orchestra
website,
you can watch/listen to a high quality video from the recording
session and verify that Steven Moeckel is indeed the concertmaster
during these concerts, and that the very energetic Mr.
Hanson is the one on the left in the cover picture above,
with pianist Lefèvre on the right, contrary to what you
might have otherwise supposed.
Paul Shoemaker
Alain Lefèvre
(Yamaha CF-III-S piano) 
