Jules Massenet - Orchestral Works (Neeme Järvi)

Information

Composer: Jules Massenet

• Suite de ballet from 'Le Cid'
• Le Dernier Sommeil de la Vierge
• Overture to 'Le Roi de Lahore'
• Fantaisie, for Cello and Orchestra
• Ouverture de 'Phèdre'
• Scène religieuse from 'Les Érinnyes'
• Entr’acte Sevillana from 'Don César de Bazan'
• Scènes pittoresques (Suite for Orchestra No. 4)

Truls Mørk, cello

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

Neeme Järvi, conductor

Date: 2014

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205137

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Review

Admirers of Neeme Järvi’s recordings of the Tchaikovsky ballets with the Bergen Philharmonic will know that he is just the man for this collection of Massenet’s music drawn from the theatre and concert hall. From the moment the curtain rises on the ballet suite from Le Cid you can sense the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd as the Suisse Romande Orchestra snap into the opening chords. Their delicate wind phrases and the click of the castanets identify the Castillane, the first of the seven national dances from Massenet’s epic opera. We learn from Roger Nichols’s entertaining notes that Massenet, always attentive to his leading ladies, incorporated ‘quelques rythmes très intéressants’ suggested to him by the ballerina Rosita Mauri, who danced the lead role. She too would no doubt have relished the pointed playing, the shading of a phrase from crescendo to diminuendo, the sinuous line of those languorous Spanish tunes and above all the underlying spring in the step of each dance. This is a winning interpretation; and likewise the conductor’s view on the Scènes pittoresques, a charming suite. The Spanish flavour returns in the brilliant entr’acte from Don César and the ceremonial in Le roi de Lahore, where the lyrical passages invoke Tchaikovsky, who much admired this opera. Debussy doffed his hat to Phèdre, a concert overture, where the stark opening with its plunging bass-lines recalls another tragic figure, Berlioz’s Lear.

The cellist Truls Mørk is heard on an additional track, the Meditation from Thaïs, available as a download (the 81'30" running time preventing its inclusion), and more significantly in the Fantaisie for cello and orchestra, where his lovely playing, full of felicitous touches in perfect partnership with the orchestra, offers unadulterated pleasure. This collaboration is equally charismatic in an eloquent performance of ‘Le dernier sommeil de la Vierge’, where the combination of unmuted cello and muted violin, one octave up, testifies to Massenet’s unfailing ear for orchestral effect. A CD to warm the heart and lift the spirits.

-- Adrian Edwards, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.ft.com/content/834f76f6-e13f-11e3-875f-00144feabdc0

https://www.allmusic.com/album/neeme-j%C3%A4rvi-conducts-massenet-mw0002645405

https://limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/massenet-overtures-orchestral-works-orchestre-de-la-suisse-romande/

https://www.amazon.com/Neeme-J%C3%A4rvi-conducts-Massenet/dp/B00J9SEVP4

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Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty, made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.. He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. Massenet taught composition at the Paris Conservatoire from 1878 until 1896. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné. Massenet's his operas are widely accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Massenet

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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_Järvi

http://www.neemejarvi.ee/

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