Thursday, August 11, 2022

Hans Rosbaud’s Recordings of French Music

Courtesy of Naxos of America

Many readers probably know by now that I am a latecomer to the Hans Rosbaud Edition albums that have been released by SWR Classic, the “house label” of the Southwest German Radio (SWR) Symphony Orchestra based in Baden-Baden. My first encounter with this series took place in September of 2020 with the release of an eight-CD album of performances of the music of Gustav Mahler. This was followed in October of 2021 with the release of two CDs accounting for three of the symphonies of Jean Sibelius (with an additional three tracks of songs).

Tomorrow SWR Classic will release the next installment in the series; and, for those that want to be “first on the block,” Amazon.com has a Web page for processing pre-orders. The new album has four CDs collected under the title French Music. The first CD is devoted entirely to Claude Debussy. The second is shared by Maurice Ravel and Albert Roussel. The third presents a single composition by each of four composers: Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud, Maurice Jarre, and Olivier Messiaen. The final CD begins with Arthur Honegger’s third symphony, followed by two compositions by Marcel Mihalovici.

Mihalovici is clearly a “wild card in the deck.” Having known nothing about him, I was impressed by the scope of his Wikipedia page. For one thing, his “opus count” goes up to 114. However, not all of the numbers are consecutive and some of the works are identified as “??,” included in the list “where they are presumed to have been composed” (to quote the Wikipedia page). More appealing (to me at least) is Mihalovici’s interest in Samuel Beckett, which included an opera based on the one-act monologue “Krapp’s Last Tape.”

The first of Rosbaud’s selections is Mihalovici’s Opus 66, which is his second symphony. It was scored for string orchestra and given the title “Sinfonia partita.” As might be guessed, this 1952 composition reflects the neoclassical genre; and, in the spirit of the subtitle, each movement visits either one or two traditional forms. The recording is a premiere performance, which was recorded in January of 1953. There follow two tracks for the Opus 44 toccata scored for piano and orchestra, which was completed in 1940. The pianist is Monique Haas.

The Honegger symphony also has a title: “Symphony Liturgique.” Since it was composed in 1946, it fits chronologically between the two Mihalovici selections. Each of the three movements is a reflection on a Latin liturgical text, although it may take the serious listener several encounters with the music to establish the connection between the themes and the texts.

The other “wild card” is Jarre, who is better known for his film scores than for concert music. Indeed, not long after he recorded his first film score in 1951, he left France and moved to the United States. He became the composer for all of the films made by David Lean, beginning with Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. Ironically (but not surprisingly) Jarre’s Wikipedia page says nothing about any of his concert music. However, in 1956 he composed a collection of twelve pieces grouped under the title Divertimento for Mozart. Rosbaud recorded the eleventh of these, which is a brief (three minutes) concertino for percussion and strings.

The names of the remaining composers will probably be familiar to most readers. However, this may not be the case for the compositions by Roussel and Ibert. Most interesting of these will probably be Ibert’s suite entitled Le Chevalier errant (the knight-errant). This is likely to bring Don Quixote to mind, particularly since the first movement of the suite depicts windmills. However, the “knight of the doleful countenance” is never explicitly identified. Nevertheless, while Ibert’s piece is not as well known as the Richard Strauss Opus 35 tone poem, it is easier to follow the narrative through the four movements, each with a readily-grasped descriptive title.

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