Albert Roussel - Évocations; etc. (Yan Pascal Tortelier)

Information

Composer: Albert Roussel

1. Suite in F, Op. 33: I. Prélude
2. Suite in F, Op. 33: II. Sarabande
3. Suite in F, Op. 33: III. Gigue
4. Pour une fête de printemps, Op. 22
5. Évocations, Op. 15: I. Les Dieux dans l'ombre des cavernes
6. Évocations, Op. 15: II. La Ville rose
7. Évocations, Op. 15: III. Aux bords du Fleuve sacré

Kathryn Rudge, mezzo-soprano
Alessandro Fisher, tenor
François Le Roux, baritone
CBSO Chorus

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor

Date: 2018
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010957

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Review

Completed in 1911, Évocations was the work that put Albert Roussel on the musical map at its premiere a year later. The first of his scores to be inspired by his honeymoon tour of India in 1909, its three movements successively depict the caves at Ellora, the ‘pink city’ of Jaipur and the Ganges as it flows through the sacred city of Benares. Though it reveals a fertile musical imagination at work, it’s not quite a masterpiece. Roussel’s harmonic and melodic language, with its unresolved chromatic suspensions and Orientalist flourishes, is strikingly novel but not as adventurous as his 1918 opera Padmâvatî, in which traditional Indian music is indelibly woven into the score’s fabric. The choral finale, meanwhile, setting a text by Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi in three sections of unequal length (a love scene, a baritone aria and a hymn to the sun), comes over as episodic. Against that, however, must be set the originality of Roussel’s orchestration, in which sensuality rubs shoulders with abrasion and dark-hued textures repeatedly intrude upon Impressionist transparency.

Yan Pascal Tortelier’s recording, made live at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall last year, marks its first appearance on disc since Michel Plasson’s 1988 EMI version with the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra and Orfeón Donostiarra. Both are exceptionally fine, though Tortelier offers the more dramatic interpretation, finding danger as well as beauty in the score. The BBC Philharmonic’s dark-sounding brass suggest dread as well as awe at the sight of the Ellora caves, where Plasson is calmly majestic, and the militaristic fanfares that interrupt the chattering woodwind of the Jaipur scherzo similarly carry deeper intimations of menace in Tortelier’s performance. In the final movement, he presses forwards with greater urgency and has marginally the more focused choir in the CBSO Chorus. Tortelier’s soloists are every bit as good as Plasson’s starrier line-up (Nathalie Stutzmann, Nicolai Gedda, José van Dam), though the Chandos recording places François Le Roux close to the microphones and Kathryn Rudge and Alessandro Fisher too far back.

The companion pieces, both encapsulating the harder-edged style Roussel adopted after the First World War, were recorded in the orchestra’s Salford studio. Pour une fête de printemps, elegant yet dissonant, started life as the Second Symphony’s scherzo before Roussel decided its length was out of proportion to the rest of the score and published it as a separate piece. Tortelier is wonderfully alert to its mercurial shifts in mood and occasional hints of violence. He drives the outer movements of the Suite in F very hard, meanwhile, only relaxing the tension in the central Sarabande with its unnerving melody that never quite goes where you expect, even after repeated hearings. The playing here is exemplary in its rhythmic precision and detail, with all those tricky brass and woodwind solos finely honed and dexterously done.

-- Tim Ashley, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Aug/Roussel_evocations_CHAN10957.htm
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=15461
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/17/roussel-evocations-pour-une-fete-de-printemps-suite-in-f-review-french-rarities
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/roussel-bbc-philharmonic-cbso-chorus-yan-pascal-tortelier/

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Albert Roussel (5 April 1869 – 23 August 1937) was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period. His early works were strongly influenced by the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while he later turned toward neoclassicism. He studied with Julien Koszul in Roubaix, with Eugène Gigout in Paris, then continued his studies until 1908 at the Schola Cantorum de Paris where one of his teachers was Vincent d'Indy. While studying, he also taught. His students included Erik Satie and Edgard Varèse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Roussel

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Yan Pascal Tortelier (born 19 April 1947) is a French conductor and violinist, and is the son of the cellist Paul Tortelier. At age 14, he was a first-prize winner for violin at the Paris Conservatoire. He was principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra (1989-1992), the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (1992-2003), Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (OSESP) (2009-2011) and currently, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He is a regular recording artist for Chandos Records, and has conducted commercial recordings for Chandos with the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the OSESP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Pascal_Tortelier

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