Various Composers - French Music for the Stage (Neeme Järvi)

Information

• (01) Ambroise Tomas - Overture to 'Raymond, ou Le Secret de la reine'
• (02) Daniel Auber - Overture to 'Fra Diavolo, ou L'Hôtellerie de Terracine', S 18
• (03) François-Adrien Boieldieu - Overture to 'Le Calife de Bagdad'
• (04) François-Adrien Boieldieu - Overture to 'La Dame blanche'
• (05) Léo Delibes - Scène du bal and Vieille Chanson from 'Le Roi s'amuse'
• (13) Jules Massenet - Espada

Estonian National Symphony Orchestra

Neeme Järvi, conductor

Date: 2021

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2020151

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Review

My doubts over this disc have nothing whatever to do with the performance, which displays the splendid conjunction of subtlety and élan we have come to expect from these performers. It concerns the music itself, in which the entertaining is less splendidly conjoined with the nondescript. One of Pierre Boulez’s many challenging remarks was that after Rameau there had been no French tradition, merely Berlioz. If one is looking for support of this proposition, the overtures by Auber and particularly Boieldieu recorded here provide it in spades. Over half a century ago, Martin Cooper was noting that with Auber ‘the purely melodic interest is generally small.’ As for Boieldieu, after joining the majority of the jury that condemned Berlioz’s Prix de Rome offering La Mort de Cléopâtrein 1829, he complained to the composer that ‘you refuse to write like everybody else’ – so presumably that was his own intention. The fact that the three consecutive overtures concerned are all in D major doesn’t help.

While I stand by my previous description of Massenet’s Espada as ‘processed cheese’ (Christmas 2020), the disc is worth buying for the music by Ambroise Thomas and Delibes. Thomas did himself no favours later in life by ‘cancelling’ Franck, Fauré, Bizet and others, but he had a strong melodic gift and a fine ear for orchestral sound. Delibes’s incidental music to Le Roi s’amuse, with its passing modal inflections and abundant charm, provides the undoubted highlight of the disc. Quel musicien!

-- Roger Nichols, BBC Music Magazine

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Neeme Järvi (born June 7, 1937 in Tallinn) is an Estonian conductor. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory under Yevgeny Mravinsky and Nikolai Rabinovich, among others. Järvi was Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Gothenburg Symphony (1982-2004), Royal Scottish National Orchestra (1984-1988), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1990-2005) and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2012-2015), among others. He made over 400 recordings for labels such as BIS, Chandos and Deutsche Grammophon and best known for his interpretations of Romantic and 20th century classical music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neeme_J%C3%A4rvi

http://www.neemejarvi.ee/

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