THE ESSENTIAL Yan Pascal Tortelier
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CHAN 241-32 THE ESSENTIAL Margaret Fingerhut piano Ulster Orchestra • BBC Philharmonic 32 Yan Pascal Tortelier 33 CCHANHAN 2241-3241-32 BBook.inddook.indd 332-332-33 222/8/062/8/06 110:27:030:27:03 Paul Dukas (1865 –1935) COMPACT DISC ONE 1 Fanfare pour précéder ‘La Péri’ * 1:55 2 La Péri * 17:40 Poème dansé en un tableau 3 Lipnitzki / Lebrecht Music & Arts Lipnitzki / Lebrecht Photo Library L’Apprenti sorcier * 11: 31 Scherzo d’après une ballade de Goethe Symphony in C major † 41: 00 in C-Dur • en ut majeur 4 I Allegro non troppo vivace, ma con fuoco 14:41 5 II Andante espressivo e sostenuto 14:51 6 III Allegro spiritoso 11:18 TT 72:21 COMPACT DISC TWO 1 Polyeucte † 15:03 Overture after Corneille Andante sostenuto – Allegro non troppo vivace – Andante espressivo – Mouvement du 1er allegro – Andante sostenuto Paul Dukas 3 CCHANHAN 2241-3241-32 BBook.inddook.indd 22-3-3 222/8/062/8/06 110:26:530:26:53 The Essential Paul Dukas Sonate ‡ 47:43 ‘A good provision of sunlight’: this was in the rigid Conservatoire mould? Dukas’s in E minor • in e-Moll • en mi mineur how one nineteenth-century French critic offi cial advice to young conductors betrayed 2 I Modérément vif – expressif et marqué 12:04 described the ‘compositional palette’ of not a shred of poetry: 3 II Calme – un peu lent – très soutenu 12:49 Emmanuel Chabrier, and that vivid double There is only one secret in conducting an imagery of light and colour recurs throughout orchestra: the right hand should be raised, 4 III Vivement, avec légèreté 8:38 much writing on French music of the period. clearly visible, beating time precisely. A supple 5 IV Très lent 14: 01 In the fi nal decades of the century French wrist is all that matters, and besides, why would composers were seen to be exploring the one want to gesticulate? 6 Prélude élégiaque ‡ 4:38 glittering possibilities of the orchestra in But privately he remarked to a colleague Lent et recueilli much the same way as the impressionist about the ‘Danse’ in La Péri: painters explored the play of light Let the beginning gently drift, like something 7 ‡ 4:01 La Plainte, au loin, du faune… transforming and transfi guring the natural only half suggested, which gradually becomes Assez lent world. Indeed both painters and musicians clearer and more precise. Otherwise it is TT 71:46 were inspired by similar sources of light (or intolerable. rather, lumière – even the sound of the French Chabrier, meanwhile, was quick to encourage word is more evocative than that of the an aspiring young musician: Margaret Fingerhut piano ‡ English!), from the cool, luminous blues and See here: it’s obvious that you really love music. greys of the Paris sky to the warm, seductive Always remember that it should be written from Ulster Orchestra * colours of Spain and the Orient. And maybe the heart and not with the head! Paul Willey leader that range of light helps to explain the That did not mean, of course, that balance † distinctive French balance between clarity of and order were of no value. Both Chabrier BBC Philharmonic form and fl amboyance of execution. and Dukas greatly admired the music of the Dennis Simons leader Something of that balance of opposing French classical masters; Dukas even edited Yan Pascal Tortelier * † forces is also refl ected in the life and a new edition of the works of Rameau. career of the composer represented on this For Dukas, the Orient was the most recording. Listening to his music, who would seductive foreign infl uence on his music. imagine that Paul Dukas (1865–1935) was La Péri, which he described as a poème the most conventional of academic musicians dansé, was his last major orchestral work, 4 5 CCHANHAN 2241-3241-32 BBook.inddook.indd 44-5-5 222/8/062/8/06 110:26:550:26:55 composed in 1912. It was written for the of water is fetched and emptied. In the nick But Dukas, very much a classicist at several rehearsals, cat-calls were to be heard all Russian-French dancer Natalia Trouhanova, of time the sorcerer himself appears and puts heart, realised that a style which had to around me, and it has to be admitted that they whose style was modelled on that of Isadora everything to rights. a considerable extent abandoned the were not all because of the new work, some of Duncan, and she gave the fi rst performance It is tempting at this point to read a kind landmarks of the cadence, and indulged them being destined for the young conductor, at the Paris Opéra in 1912. The scenario of dark allegory into all this. For L’Apprenti in extended passages of vagrant harmony, Paul Vidal… concerns a young Persian Prince, Iskender, sorcier appeared at a time when many needed all the more urgently some formal Vidal, a Conservatoire compatriot of the who travels to the ends of the Earth to search French composers were bewitched into grip to avoid aimless meandering. How did composer, was in fact the dedicatee of the for the lotus fl ower of immortality. He fi nds drawing deeply from the Wagnerian well, one achieve this? Always the perceptive work, which fared far better at its revival at it guarded by a beautiful sleeping Péri (or and neither Chabrier nor Dukas escaped critic with the appropriate turn of phrase, the Concerts Lamoureux in 1902. The critic fairy), but as he steals it the Péri awakes, without something of a struggle. But perhaps Dukas credited Franck with having found the of Le Temps this time noted ‘traces of crying bitterly, and Iskender falls in love with a more positive moral would be that, like appropriate formula: inexperience’ alongside an ‘inner energy and her. She dances for him and he relinquishes the Sorcerer, the best French music casts its César thought cold-bloodedly and struggled concentrated vehemence of feeling’. the lotus fl ower, then realises, as he watches own potent spell, with a ‘good provision of furiously: a principle which is most important to The symphony is cast in the classical three- her vanish, that only darkness and oblivion sunlight’ and an unselfconscious originality. observe in composition. movement form with the outer movements await him. He was surely referring to both Julius César both in Dukas’s favourite compound time (he © Edward Blakeman The great irony of his life was that and César Franck. once joked that he was born singing in 9/8). although he was appointed Professor of The Symphony in C major clearly marked Also conventional is the use of a rhythmically Composition at the Paris Conservatoire the In retrospect, the 1890s marked a diffi cult time Dukas as a classicist and a ‘Franckiste’. While incisive fi rst theme and a lyrically contrasting year that he composed La Péri, from then for French music. With so much domination, his prix de Rome compatriot Debussy was second theme. More typical of the composer until his death Dukas produced no other both by the established ‘schools’ of French forging esoteric links with symbolist poetry is the introduction of subsidiary but none the major works. It was a strangely inconclusive music (notably César Franck) and by the operas (in such pieces as the Prélude à l’après-midi less important ideas for the brass instruments. ending to a career which had begun with of Richard Wagner, French composers had to d’un faune and Pelléas et Mélisande) Dukas The slow movement uses a novel device such brilliance back in 1879, when Dukas fi ght hard to establish an independent identity. had the effrontery to compose a symphony at the opening where a lyrical melody is conducted the fi rst performance of his own Paul Dukas was no exception. A passionate in plain C major! Its fi rst performance on accompanied by a restless fi gure, fi rst in the L’Apprenti sorcier – subtitled a Scherzo for devotee, in particular of Wagner’s Tristan und 3 January 1897, at the Concerts de l’Opéra, bassoons, then gradually rising to become a orchestra. It was inspired by the ballad by lsolde and Parsifal, and also much under the was not a resounding success as the melodic motive in itself in the upper strings. Goethe, which recounts how a lazy sorcerer’s spell of César Franck, he composed music celebrated conductor D.-E. lnghelbrecht, then A central section, accompanied by shimmering apprentice, bidden to draw water in his during the 1890s, the decade from which both a modest second violinist, noted: strings, and with static harmonies and distant master’s absence, instead bewitches a broom the Symphony in C major and the Overture Who could believe today that the work which wind solos, has caused some commentators to do the job for him. Unfortunately he cannot to Polyeucte date, which is heavily indebted nowadays seems to us so lucid aroused not only to see the movement as a piece of landscape think how to cancel the spell and soon the to the restless chromaticism of both these the protestations of the public but also those of impressionism. Out of this rises a strong, whole place is fl ooded, as bucket after bucket infl uences. the musicians of the orchestra? In the course of brassy, chorale-like episode. 6 7 CCHANHAN 2241-3241-32 BBook.inddook.indd 66-7-7 222/8/062/8/06 110:26:550:26:55 The fi nale, like the fi rst movement, public platform, in this case the Concerts recording neatly encapsulates both of these masterly stealth, a highly chromatic fugue, contrasts rhythmic incision with a warmer Lamoureux where the work was given its aspects.