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Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
The Seven Stars’ Symphony, Op 132 (1933)
Vers la voûte étoilée, Op 129 (1923-1933/rev. 1939)
Sinfonieorchester Basel/Ariane Matiakh
rec. 2021, Stadtcasino Basel, Switzerland
CAPRICCIO C5449 [57]

Charles Koechlin’s music is quite unique, at once elusively familiar yet deeply original. Jens F. Laurson’s perceptive liner note in turn quotes Paul Landormy writing in 1943; “[Charles Koechlin’s] conception of musical beauty is closed to nothing. It accommodates all formulas, all systems. He understands all; rejects nothing.... he uses all [musical] languages in turn, from simple monody or the most classical harmony to the most challenging polytonality. He retains complete freedom”. I quote that at length and at the start of this review because that could be applied in full to the main work here; The Seven Stars’ Symphony. Koechlin lived a long and productive life – his opus numbers reached 226. He studied with Massenet and Fauré, taught the likes of Poulenc and Sauguet, orchestrated Debussy’s late works, founded a society for contemporary music alongside Ravel and Florent Schmidt and lived long enough to see the Darmstädter Ferienkurse start. To the ear alone he does often sound like a missing link between the late works of Debussy and the visionary ecstasies of Messiaen.

Although he no longer languishes in musical oblivion, neither is his music well-known let alone popular. The measure of that is that The Seven Stars’ Symphony performed here is probably his most recorded work – at three versions - if one ignores the Debussy orchestrations. The liner refers to the two preceding commercial recordings from Alexander Myrat and the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra on French EMI and the other by James Judd and the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin on RCA. I know both these recordings but not the third mentioned – an old Aries LP featuring (probably) Norman Del Mar and the LPO working under a pseudonym. It has to be said that both the EMI and RCA versions are at least good. This is quite a tribute to those ensembles because this is a very hard score indeed – especially for the strings. I am sure that part of the reason for the wider neglect of Koechlin’s music is that the size of his orchestras, allied to the rehearsal time required for satisfactory performances of such unfamiliar conspires against orchestra’s budgets. For the collector in recent times a major boost was given by Heinz Holliger’s very fine seven disc survey with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR on SWR Music. For anyone interested in this composer that is a compulsory purchase. Curiously the symphony does not appear in that set although the coupling here Vers la voûte étoilée [Toward the vault of stars] does. As it happens the couplings on both the EMI and RCA discs do not appear elsewhere in the Koechlin discography so this makes things easy for the Koechlin completist who will want all three performances!

Good as Myrat and Judd are, Araine Matiakh conducting the Sinfonieorchester Basel on this new Capriccio disc is even better. Indeed, in purely sonic terms – I do not mean the engineering as such which is excellent – but in the creation of this sensual and rapturous soundworld, it strikes me that Matiakh trumps Holliger as well. The Basel players manage a perfect balance between poised tonal beauty and powerful dynamism. It must be said that The Seven Stars’ Symphony is a very quirky work. For starters it is not really a symphony at all and even accepting that, you have to dig deep to find any kind of specific pictorial representation of the film stars each movement nominally represents. As far as the musical language that is deployed do not expect for one second any kind of ‘film score’ style. When Koechlin wrote this work in 1933, cinema was transitioning from Silent Movies to Talkies and the stars chosen inhabited both genres. The bulk of the seven portraits are quite brief; two just break six minutes, three are sub five and Lilian Harvey (menuet fugue) is just 2:17. That leaves the final movement Charlie Chaplin as a fifteen minutes series of variations on the letters of his name. Koechlin does the same variations form with the fifth movement based on the name of Marlène Dietrich. Rather unfortunately given that the spelling is crucial to the work itself(!) the CD cover and main liner title refers to her as Merlène. Of all the typos in all the world...... I have to say the musical impact of each of the seven movements is one of a beautifully imagined but abstract soundscape which does not have any specific illustrative function. The liner suggests that the 4^th movement Clara Bow et la joyeuse Californie functions as the symphony’s scherzo and preceding Greta Garbo (choral païen) all disembodied ondes martenot and statuesque chords is the slow movement. Curiously for a work which is nearly three quarters of an hour of harmonic ambiguity the final or so minute of the work expands into a rather glorious – dare one say cinematic – euphonious chorale with a very major key final chord.

Whatever the motivations or musical styles evoked, this performance is aurally glorious. The sounds that Matiakh coaxes from her Swiss orchestra are quite stunningly beautiful. I have not heard any of Matiakh’s previous recordings but this is genuinely top notch – completely in tune with the idiom and style of this idiosyncratic composer. The performance of the accompanying Vers la voûte étoilée reinforces this good opinion. I enjoyed this work in Holliger’s set but I have to say that Matiakh transforms something attractive into something sensational. Astonishingly, although this work was completed in 1933, it had to wait more than fifty years until 1989 for a first performance. Again Matiakh finds an ideal balance between rapture and repose, the visionary and inner contemplation. Koechlin’s title is again hard to decipher – the liner suggests someone gazing at a night sky but my sense is that that is too literal a reading. Again an abstract mood painting seems more appropriate – a musical equivalent of a Turneresque study of sea and sky where the viewer’s interpretation can change from minute to minute. Koechlin chooses to avoid the literal and embrace the ambiguous. That is what makes him hard for interpreters and listeners to get a handle on but exactly where Matiakh succeeds so well – the clarity of musical thought and execution is wonderfully achieved. The closing pages are again beautifully realised – an ascent into the unknown whether literally or metaphysically is very impressive.

Of course all of Matiakh’s insights and understanding would count for little if the orchestra and the recording did not match her vision. But as should be clear by now that is not the case. The playing of the entire Sinfonieorchester Basel is uniformly excellent – lovely woodwind solos matched by a unanimity and accuracy in the string playing and warmth and weight in the brass. The Capriccio recording is ‘just’ standard CD but is very good indeed – beautifully balanced and detailed with a wide dynamic range and deep soundstage. The only disappointment is that Capriccio did not make use of the twenty five minutes or so unused capacity on this CD – fifty six minutes feels like rather short-change these days. However, the quality of this disc should persuade Koechlin converts to add this disc to their collection even at the risk of duplication. For those wishing to discover this composer for the first time this might well be the disc to start their collection with.

Nick Barnard
 
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