Charles Gounod - Symphonies Nos. 1-3 (Oleg Caetani)

Information

Composer: Charles Gounod

• (01) Symphony No. 1 in D major
• (05) Symphony No. 2 in E flat major
• (09) Symphony No. 3 in C major (fragment)

Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Oleg Caetani, conductor

Date: 2014
Label: CPO
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/charles-gounod-symphonien-nr-1-3/hnum/3126699

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Review

By no means mainstream repertoire, Gounod’s two completed symphonies nevertheless fully merit the finesse and joie de vivre that these performances by the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana under Oleg Caetani bring to them. Mendelssohn is generally cited as the principal parallel to Gounod’s manner of symphonic writing but there is an element of early Schubert in the D major First Symphony and of Beethoven in the E flat major Second. Charm of melody is allied to an infallible technique and a lucid use of orchestral timbres. If the harmony sometimes bespeaks of a Romantic temperament, there is something of a Classical order in the music’s organisation and structure.

Besides the two symphonies, both of them composed in 1855, this disc also includes the premiere recording of a symphonic fragment in C major: the torso of a first-movement Andante molto maestoso – Moderato and a complete slow movement. These were written much later, probably in the early 1890s, when Gounod was nearing the end of his life. Although the style of the music harks back to the Gounod of old as if Brahms and César Franck had never existed, there is a weight and urgency to the three and a half extant minutes of the first movement that are tantalisingly auspicious of an intense symphonic argument; and the Andante, while still not entirely freed from Mendelssohn’s influence, emits an affecting autumnal glow. Throughout, Caetani conjures up lovely, affectionate and spirited playing of music that never fails to delight through its warmth, taste and vivacity.

-- Geoffrey Norris, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/gounod-symphonies-nos-1-3-mw0002742923
https://www.amazon.com/Gounod-Orchestra-della-Svizzera-Italiana/dp/B00M4QE04K

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Charles Gounod (17 June 1818 – 17 October or 18 October 1893) was a French composer. He attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Fromental Halévy and Pierre Zimmerman. Gounod is best known for his Ave Maria, based on a work by Bach, as well as his opera Faust; another opera by Gounod still performed is Roméo et Juliette. Though his reputation began to fade even before he died, he is still generally regarded as a major figure in nineteenth century French music. Stylistically, he was a conservative whose influence nevertheless extended to Bizet, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gounod

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/charles-gounod-mn0000153981/biography

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Oleg Caetani (born 1956) is an Italian conductor. He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of the conductor and composer Igor Markevitch and his second wife Donna Topazia Caetani. Caetani studied with Nadia Boulanger, and also went to the Moscow Conservatory to study conducting with Kirill Kondrashin. He graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatory in conducting with Ilya Musin. Among Caetani's recordings are the first complete cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies recorded by an Italian orchestra, and the symphonic cycles by Tchaikovsky and Gounod (Diapason d'or).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Caetani

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