Christoph Eschenbach

BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 1 Albert Roussel Symphony No. 2 Bacchus et Ariane Orchestre de Paris Christoph Eschenbach 1 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 2 Albert Roussel in Varengeville, July 1921 (Photo taken by Francis Poulenc) 2 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 3 Albert Roussel (1869–1937) Bacchus et Ariane, Op. 43 Orchestral Suite No. 1 1 I. Introduction 1:48 2 II. Youths and maidens at play 2:37 3 III. The labyrinth dance 3:16 4 IV. Bacchus appears. The dance is interrupted. A curious Ariadne approaches Bacchus. He twirls his black cloak above her head. She falls into a deep sleep 1:49 5 V. Theseus and his companions rush toward Bacchus. Bacchus reveals his identity. With an imperious gesture he indicates to Theseus and his companions the path to the sea. The clouds gather in the sky. Theseus and his companions head for the shore. The clouds break up. The sun reappears 2:41 6 VI. Dance of Bacchus. Ariadne, still asleep, takes part in Bacchus’ dance. The rhythm slackens. Bacchus lays Ariadne down on the rock and disappears 4:58 3 3 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 4 Bacchus et Ariane, Op. 43 Orchestral Suite No. 2 7 I. Introduction 2:38 8 II. Awakening of Ariadne. She looks about in astonishment. She arises, running and searching everywhere for Theseus and his companions. She understands that she has been abandoned. She struggles to bring herself to the top of a large rock. She is ready to cast herself into the sea. She falls into the arms of Bacchus who suddenly appears from behind the crest of the rock. Bacchus once again takes up the dance of dreams with Ariadne, now awake 2:59 9 III. Bacchus dances alone 1:51 10 IV. The kiss 1:07 11 V. The Dionysian spell 0:53 12 VI. The procession of the Thiase. A faun and a priestesse of Bacchus give a golden cup of grape nectar to Ariadne 0:37 13 VII. Ariadne’s dance 3:31 14 VIII. Dance of Ariadne and Bacchus 1:02 15 IX. Bacchanale. The coronation of Ariadne 4:14 4 4 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 5 Symphony No. 2, Op. 23 16 I. Lent 17:12 17 II. Modéré 8:39 18 III. Très lent 15:46 [77:58] Orchestre de Paris Christoph Eschenbach, conductor Recorded by Radio Classique Recordings: Paris, Théâtre Mogador, February 2005 (Bacchus et Ariane), Conservatoire de Paris, July 2005 (Symphony No. 2) Executive Producers: Reijo Kiilunen, Kevin Kleinmann Recording Producer: Mitsou Carré Balance Engineers: Mitsou Carré (Bacchus et Ariane), Jean-Christophe Messonnier (Symphony No. 2) Assistant Balance Engineers: Laure Casenave-Père, Perrine Ganjean (Symphony No. 2) Editing: Mitsou Carré Publishers: Editions Durand Liner Notes: Damien Top Photos: Jupiterimages (Cover Photo), Francis Poulenc / Damien Top Collection (Albert Roussel), Boris Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet (Bacchus et Ariane), Eric Brissaud (Christoph Eschenbach) Cover Design and Booklet Layout: Eduardo Nestor Gomez Booklet Editor: Jean-Christophe Hausmann P 2006 Ondine Inc., Helsinki Ondine Inc. Fredrikinkatu 77 A 2 / FIN-00100 Helsinki Tel.: +358.9.434.2210 / Fax: +358.9.493.956 / E-mail: [email protected] 5 5 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 6 Albert Roussel (1869–1937) The heroes of Jules Verne’s novels haunted the orphan’s imagination to such an extent that in an attempt to follow in their footsteps, he joined the Navy in 1887. Tearing himself away from the upper middle-class background of the textile industry of northern France, he succumbed to the lure of a life of adventure. But in 1894 failing health forced him to interrupt his promising career as an officer cadet and so he devoted himself to his second great passion, music, studying privately with Eugène Gigout in Paris and later at the Schola Cantorum, quickly revealing his gifts as a composer and making a name for himself with a series of chamber works, including a Piano Trio, a Divertissement and a number of songs, but also essaying orchestral works with his symphonic prelude Résurrection. In spite of this, Roussel, an eternal voyager, continued to be obsessed by the distant countries that he knew from only their ports. In 1912 he gave musical expression to memories of his honeymoon in the East Indies in Évocations, a work that caught the attention of the musical world. No less admired was his ballet-pantomime of 1913, Le Festin de l’araignée, a piece whose popularity has never waned. With the end of the First World War came the destruction of all the certainties that had bolstered society throughout the last two millennia. A chapter had ended and a new page had been turned. In an attempt to forget the horror of the trenches, Roussel turned to the future: this wonderful follower of Vincent d’Indy could not rest until he had changed completely. Just as Ravel had abandoned his rhapsody Zazpiak-Bat in order to write La valse and given musical form to the destruction of a whole generation, so Roussel abandoned both his Poème des eaux and his opera Le Roi Tobol: “My music was perhaps too attached to externals and to picturesque procedures which – as I later judged – robbed it of some of its specific truth. From then on, I resolved to extend my harmonic range and tried to come closer to the idea of music as something desired and realized 6 6 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 7 for its own sake alone.” Polymodality and polytonality were gradually to lend his musical language a sinewy texture that it had not had before. If Light and A Farewell expressed the stupor that followed the carnage, Roussel rediscovered a sense of balance and mischievousness in Le Bachelier de Salamanque and Sarabande. From now on, none of his works would end on a sombre note, as Le Festin de l’araignée and Padmâvatî had done, but – as in Bacchus et Ariane, Le Testament de la tante Caroline, Aeneas and Rapsodie flamande – would culminate in a spirit of celebratory apotheosis. This change of stylistic direction became clear with Pour une fête de printemps and the Second Symphony, which Roussel wrote between July 1919 and September 1921. “It amused me a lot to orchestrate it; I hope it will sound good.” The resultant three-movement work is a vast meditation of Brucknerian stamp drawing on Le Roi Tobol and taking a stage further the experiments in orchestration already undertaken in Padmâvatî, but it struck more than one music lover as formless when it received its first performance under Rhené- Baton at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 4 March 1922. Even so, André Caplet noted presciently that here was “a message of a rare quality”. “I would have preferred it if listeners had found their way round the work without the help of a programme,” wrote the composer. “However, I thought I did well to add one. But it was very much contrary to its spirit.” A note related each of its movements to one of the three ages of man. “Apart from the introduction, which is no more than a kind of preface, the different ideas set forth in the work are intended to express the following: in the opening movement, the ardour and enthusiasm of young people en route to life [in fact, this movement expresses the joy of Endemion on discovering Lilith, Roussel having lifted various fragments from Tobol, the score of which he wanted to rewrite along simpler lines]; in the second movement, undemanding pleasures [this is a Scherzo reminiscent of “La ville rose” from Évocations], then the profound impressions of a sentimental kind that are found here [the central nocturne takes the place of a trio]; in the third movement [structurally speaking, the most original of the 7 7 BKLA0100695622-AFCD-NO 06.04.2006 16:24 Uhr Seite 8 three], pain, bitterness, revolt and, finally, the sense of peace that comes with a feeling of serenity as man rises above his passions.” In 1920 Roussel settled on the Normandy coast near Dieppe, between the woods and the ocean, and from now on the twin spirit of Classical Greece and a love of the eighteenth century imbued his music, which includes songs, chamber works such as Joueurs de flûte and orchestral pieces such as the Suite in F major. Roussel adopted “a more lucid style, the culmination of a search which, more completely personal, sought to create music of the utmost purity”. Like the old Renaissance composers, he turned to Greek philosophy, which had placed mankind at the centre of the world, and wrote his Odes anacréontiques. In doing so, he returned to the roots of a Europe that had vanished with the Great War. In this, he was anxious to breathe life into a glorious cultural past, when poetry and music had formed a single entity. He even hoped to restore to music the educational and social importance that Plato had once ascribed to it. As the well- spring of western thought and, moreover, a maritime nation, Greece was bound to seduce this former naval officer, just as it inspired Jean Cras, René de Castéra, Maurice Emmanuel, Henri Büsser, Jean Roger-Ducasse and many others. If La naissance de la lyre – described as a “conte lyrique” – left more than one listener feeling perplexed, the Dionysian verve of the ballet Bacchus et Ariane continues to this day to place this work among the most virile and sensual in the repertory, in which regard it looks forward to the harsh grandeur of Aeneas.

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