Aux Etoiles: French Symphonic Poems
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Label: Bru Zane
Cat No: BZ2007
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 2
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 20th October 2023
Contents
Works
Le Reve de CleopatreD'un matin de printemps
La Belle au bois dormant
Espana
Viviane, op.5
Istar, op.42
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'Apprenti sorcier)
Aux etoiles
Le Chasseur maudit (The Accursed Huntsman), M44
Ouverture d'Arteveld, op.10
Ludus pro patria
» La nuit et l'amour
La ToussaintLa procession nocturne
Danse macabre, op.40
Danse mystique
Artists
Orchestre national de LyonConductor
Nikolaj Szeps-ZnaiderWorks
Le Reve de CleopatreD'un matin de printemps
La Belle au bois dormant
Espana
Viviane, op.5
Istar, op.42
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'Apprenti sorcier)
Aux etoiles
Le Chasseur maudit (The Accursed Huntsman), M44
Ouverture d'Arteveld, op.10
Ludus pro patria
» La nuit et l'amour
La ToussaintLa procession nocturne
Danse macabre, op.40
Danse mystique
Artists
Orchestre national de LyonConductor
Nikolaj Szeps-ZnaiderAbout
Many Romantic composers owe their fame to one of their symphonic poems. Alongside acknowledged French masterpieces in the genre, the fifteen tracks presented here include four previously unrecorded works and several rarities by women composers. The Orchestre national de Lyon, a great champion of French Romantic music, offers a palette of shimmering colours under the baton of Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider as it relates in music the legend of Merlin the Magician, the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty and the misadventures of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Franck: Le Chasseur maudit, CFF 128
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2Guiraud: Ouverture d’Arteveld, op.10
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3Boulanger, L: D’un Matin de printemps
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4d’Indy: Istar, op.42
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5Dukas: L’Apprenti sorcier
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6Bruneau: La Belle au bois dormant
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7Holmès: Ludus pro patria: II. La Nuit et l’amour
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8Bonis: Le Rêve de Cléopâtre
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9Duparc: Aux Étoiles
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10Chausson: Viviane, op.5
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11Sohy: Danse mystique
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12Chabrier: España
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13Joncières: La Toussaint
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14Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre, op.40
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15Rabaud: La Procession nocturne, op.6
Europadisc Review
Even when it is not issuing revelatory, classily presented recordings of French (mainly 19th-century) opera, the Bru Zane label is full of surprises. Earlier this year we were bowled over by their 8-disc set ‘Compositrices’ featuring a glorious array of music by French women composers, including some real rarities. Now they are back with a two-disc album entitled ‘Aux Étoiles’, concentrating on the often neglected and certainly underrated world of the French symphonic poem. Mention the term ‘symphonic poem’ to your average concert-goer and they are likely to think of Liszt and Richard Strauss, perhaps Smetana and Sibelius, too. Further west, however, French composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries embraced the genre enthusiastically, and for them its roots lay as much with the descriptive overtures of earlier 19th-century opera and the concert overtures of Berlioz as they did with Liszt.
Particularly after the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War, there was a pronounced move to excel in genres that would counter the prevalent Germanic musical formalism, and the symphonic poem, with all its allusive potential, proved fertile ground for French composers. It also enabled the increasingly large public concert audiences to be fully engaged without the need for technical musical knowledge. Storytelling is a powerful tool, as modern classical audiences and programme planners have been rediscovering in the past few decades.
The special strength of this double album, recorded in May 2021 and September 2022 and splendidly played by the Orchestre national de Lyon under the baton of Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, is the way it combines several old favourites with even more rarities. Chabrier’s España and Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre receive sweepingly engaging performances full of exciting detail, and the programme opens with a marvellously atmospheric account of César Franck’s Le Chasseur maudit (‘The Accursed Huntsman’, after a ballad by Gottfried August Bürger). Dukas’s ever-popular L’Apprenti sorcier is particularly vivid and sparkling, from the mysterious opening pages to the mounting excitement as the hapless apprentice is deluged (literally) with all the water brought in by the bewitched broomsticks: the pungent bassoons and characterful woodwind a real delight.
Alongside these well-known pieces are many less familiar gems: d’Indy’s Istar (in which the heroine descends to the Underworld to rescue her beloved – a sort of gender-reversed Orpheus) is richly orchestrated, and is a set of variations in reverse, the theme revealed (like Istar’s naked body) only at the end of the work, many decades before Britten employed a similar procedure in his Nocturnal. Alfred Bruneau’s version of Sleeping Beauty is a real find, with a gorgeously scored opening, a heart-stopping violin-and-horn melody at its centre, and a rousing conclusion with more than a whiff of Liszt at his most upbeat.
The contributions of four women composers are particularly compelling: Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de printemps – composed towards the end of her tragically short life – combines evocative modality, decadent harmonies and impressionistic textures, ending with a wonderful downward-sweeping harp glissando. Augusta Holmès’s La Nuit et l’amour – an orchestral interlude from her ‘ode-symphonie’ Ludus pro patria – opens exquisitely and is a beguiling mixture of Gallic sensitivity and echoes of Wagner (especially Lohengrin).
Mel Bonis’s Le Rêve de Cléopâtre – the third of her three orchestral Femmes de légende – combines orientalism with heady Debussyan symbolism, and has another of those ‘ethereal’ openings so beloved of turn-of-the-century French composers. The latest work on the disc is Charlotte Sohy’s Danse mystique (1923), a meeting of nature and primitive human dance in which the power of nature eventually wins through. It has a subject matter redolent of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring of ten years earlier, but it is a much slower-burning piece, with louring, ominous textures that become increasingly oppressive before the humidity lifts at the close.
The title track, Duparc’s Aux étoiles, is an offcut from his unfinished operatic project La Roussalka, revised by the almost blind composer in 1910. Its central section contains a meltingly lovely passage for an ensemble of solo strings which has a Straussian opulence. At only five minutes in length, this lovely piece punches well above its weight. Henri Rabaud’s dreamily beautiful La Procession nocturne brings this fascinating programme to a lush close, and other works by Ernest Guiraud, Chausson and Victorin Joncières complete a fascinating programme.
The recording itself is complemented by a booklet which includes a helpful overview as well as individual notes on each composer and work, plus (where appropriate) the original programmes and some evocative illustrations. The sound-picture is richly detailed, relatively close but not without warmth, and the playing of every section of the Lyon forces under Szeps-Znaider is a constant delight, oozing with French elegance and caught with striking immediacy. It’s another belter of a release from Bru Zane, and among the most outstanding orchestral recordings we’ve heard this year.
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