Tag Archives: Édouard Lalo

On Record – Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi – Lalo: Orchestral Works (Chandos)

Posted on by
Reply

Lalo
Overture to Le Roi d’Ys (1875-88)
Namouna: Valse de la cigarette from Namouna; Suite no.1; Suite no.2 (1868-71)
Symphony in G minor (1886)

Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi

Chandos CHAN 20183 77’22”
Producer and Engineer Kaspar Karner
Recorded 6-8 June 2022, Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn, Estonia

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

After a successful album of French Music for the Stage, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and Neeme Järvi team up for more 19th century explorations, alighting on a composer the octogenarian pioneer has somehow not previously recorded.

Their chosen program brings together several companion pieces by Édouard Lalo, returning to the stage for suites from his ballet Namouna and the overture to his opera Le Roi d’Ys, before adding the Symphony in G minor as a substantial complement.

What’s the music like?

Lalo was a tuneful composer throughout his career, and these works are full to bursting with attractive melodies and colourful orchestration. The structure of the album is ideal, starting with the overture to his only opera, Le Roi d’Ys. This occupied him for 12 years, by which time the overture had changed complexion, becoming a dramatic standalone piece that could work well as a concert opener, especially with its brassy ending.

The Namouna Suites are full of charm and elegance, but are also shot through with fantasy and more than a little glamour. Initially Lalo was not given a storyline to work with, and when he was given an outline of a story from Casanova’s Memoirs he suddenly had little time to complete the work. Ill health ensued, but thanks to fellow-composer Charles Gounod helping with the orchestration he was able to get the characterful work across the line. It is full of good ideas,

Finally the Symphony in G minor, completed in the same time period as more famous cousins by Franck (in D minor) and Saint-Saëns (the Organ symphony). Its relative neglect is unfortunate, for it is a fine piece if looking a little further back for its inspiration, incorporating influences from Mendelssohn, Schubert and possibly Bizet. It is carefully structured and develops its material quite studiously, but there is an attractive lightness of touch to some its themes, some welcome weight in the Scherzo and finale, and a touching tenderness to the slow movement where the strings come to the fore. The convincing finale generates a good deal of positive energy, Lalo’s musical arguments adding up to a satisfying finish.

Does it all work?

It does – thanks to excellent performances. Järvi, of course, is a seasoned professional, but the orchestra follow his sleights of hand to the letter. The Valse de Cigarette from Namouna is a particular delight, playing around with the rhythm to induce a smile, while the brass at bring extra power and panache whenever they are employed, emphasising the Wagnerian links. The colourful shading of Namouna is aided by the Chandos engineers, who give the orchestra the ideal depth, while the performance of the Symphony in G minor has clarity and poise.

Is it recommended?

It is, enthusiastically. Lalo’s orchestral music is still underrepresented in the concert hall, but there is a growing body of highly proficient recordings of the extremely likeable works hovering round the edges of his output. This attractive album goes straight into the top bracket of modern recordings of his music.

Listen

https://open.spotify.com/album/5rJOvAkJIX2CtwRFEnvCQg?si=lind1vzUTTafMDGVbeUOpw

Buy

You can explore purchase options for this album at the Presto website

Published post no.2,077 – Sunday 4 February 2024

BBC Proms 2023 – María Dueñas, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Josep Pons – Falla, Lalo, Debussy & Ravel

Posted on by
1

Prom 8 – María Dueñas (violin), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Josep Pons

De Falla La vida breve (1904-05) – Interlude and Dance
Lalo Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21 (1874)
Debussy Ibéria (1905-08)
Ravel Boléro (1928)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 20 July 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Chris Christodoulou / BBC

The Proms went to town on Spanish music just over two decades ago, and if tonight’s concert featured only one piece by a Spanish composer, an aura of ‘Spanish-ness’ fairly pervaded this programme which likewise found the BBC Symphony Orchestra in excellent form throughout.

The piece in question was Interlude and Dance from de Falla’s opera La vida breve, once a regular fixture at these concerts and one which makes for an ideal encore or (as here) curtain-raiser according to context. Josep Pons duly brought out the drama of its initial pages, before heading into a rendition of the main section such as (rightly) predicated suavity over rhetoric, while not lacking for impetus as this music reached its effervescent close. Lasting little more than an hour, the opera ought to enjoy more frequent revival as part of a judicious double-bill.

Édouard Lalo is himself a composer worth revival, his Symphonie espagnole having regained something of its familiarity from half a century ago. Her tonal warmth and incisiveness made María Dueñas an ideal exponent, while her rapport with the orchestra accordingly underlined its concertante-like ingenuity. There was no lack of energy or pathos in the opening Allegro, the capering elegance of the Scherzando duly complementing the forcefulness of the ensuing Intermezzo before the Andante brought a finespun eloquence, itself offset by the final Rondo with its indelible main theme and never wanton virtuosity. Evidently a first-rate accompanist, Pons drew as subtle a response from the BBCSO here as in a rapt arrangement for violin and strings of Fauré’s song Après un Rêve which Dueñas offered as the entirely apposite encore.

Debussy allegedly spent just one day over the Spanish border, but his feel for that country’s musical essence in Ibéria could not be gainsaid. The unwieldly trilogy that is the orchestral Images often makes performance of this in itself a stand-alone triptych preferable, and Pons had its measure from the outset of Along the Streets and Pathways, with its characteristic alternation of decisiveness and hesitancy. Nor was there any lack of ecstatic languor in The Perfumes of the Night whose soulfulness only gradually became apparent – Pons making a rhythmically seamless transition into The Morning of a Festive Day with its vivid evoking of castanets and guitars, along with a folk-inflected élan as carried through to the headlong closing bars. Highlighting of detail never risked cohesiveness in this scintillating account.

Ravel’s Rhapsodie espagnole would have been an ideal work to conclude this concert, though few in the audience would surely have begrudged hearing Boléro in its place and Pons did not disappoint. At just over 15 minutes it was appreciably faster than the inexorable unfolding its composer most likely envisaged, but the combination of textural definition and astute placing of detail ensured this traversal enticed over the short term as keenly as it compelled across the whole. In what is a ‘concerto for orchestra’ without equal, it would seem invidious to single out individual contributions, but Alex Neal was unerring in his articulation of the side-drum ostinato, while Antoine Bedewi’s timpani steered those climactic stages through to a forceful but not overbearing denouement. If not the ultimate Boléro, this was certainly one to savour.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Click on the names for more information on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Josep Pons and María Dueñas

Ask the Audience at the BBC Proms – Jamie Sellers on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing Saint-Saëns ‘Organ’ Symphony, Lalo & Falla

Posted on by
Reply

For the latest in Arcana’s Ask The Audience series Jamie Sellers gives his verdict on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Prom of French and Spanish music.

Prom 40: Stéphanie d’Oustrac (mezzo-soprano), Joshua Bell (violin), Cameron Carpenter (organ), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Charles Dutoit

Falla El amor brujo (1914-5)

Lalo Symphonie Espagnole (1874)

Saint-Saëns Symphony no.3 in C minor Op.78 (1886)

Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 17 August 2017

You can listen to this Prom on the BBC iPlayer here

ARCANA: Jamie, how would you describe your musical upbringing?

Lots of early exposure to my elder sibling’s 1960s pop records, which they kindly left behind minus covers when they left home. At the age of seven I started to buy vinyl singles, and that was around 1972, the glam rock era. For two or three years I was listening to exclusively white rock and pop records, and it was only sometime later that I started to listen to any other music.

Did you have any exposure to classical music early on?

None whatsoever! I’m not sure what my first exposure to classical music would have been, knowingly – probably the popular classics that I would hear on TV ads, such as Carl Orff selling Brut 33 or cheap wine! For a long time – and I suspect this is true for a lot of people – you would hear only a minute or two of a much longer piece that had become famous, and those pieces would be marketed as such. You would be able to go to a petrol station and buy a ‘best of classical’ or something like that.

With your love of film, did you almost come into a lot of music that could be described as classical through soundtracks?

Yeah, definitely. Before I was even teenager I would be listening to the John Barry James Bond soundtracks, and the Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western soundtracks. I would think what amazing music it was, but it wasn’t pop music of that era, it was obviously informed by something else. It was only much later when I started to buy soundtracks, and listened to 40 minutes of music that was just a series of cues for a film, some of which were quite ambient and instrumental and others which were hooky, almost pop-classical, that I started to listen to music in that way. I started to listen to Bernard Herrmann and Lalo Schifrin, and similar people. I got the impression that most of them were frustrated classical composers who got sidelined into making film music!

Could you name three musical acts you admire, and say why you admire them?

Off the top of my head, I would say The Beatles, Bobby Bland and Hank Williams, because they all came from different aspects of popular music and were very ground breaking in their own way, whether it be in pop music – The Beatles – or country music – Hank Williams – or blues in Bobby Bland. They all made music that has been hugely influential to subsequent generations.

Turning to the Proms, how would you describe your experience tonight?

It wasn’t totally alien to me, because I have been to a number of orchestral events, usually with the soundtrack composers involved and occasionally pop performers with orchestra. To listen to a piece for half an hour or 45 minutes that is a considerably classical piece is quite different I suppose, and when you don’t know that work as well. It was mixed overall, but I really enjoyed the first piece, with what little I knew about it! I knew Manuel de Falla the name, and knew that he had something to do with flamenco. I love a lot of Spanish music and knew that he was one of the forefathers of Spanish music. Listening to it I couldn’t hear much of that, but if I was looking for references I would …I could hear a few undercurrents of Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, which is probably a very broad brush to paint it with (ed – Jamie has identified the use of Will o’ the Wisp, one of the movements in the ballet, on the album).

The second piece with the violin lead I struggled with. Obviously Joshua Bell was brilliant, and everyone was brilliant, but it didn’t do a lot for me. It struck me that at the end of each movement the music petered out in an almost accidental fashion. It wasn’t until the end of the third part that it had a very definite ending, which incidentally was my favourite part of the piece. The first two parts just seemed to end in a very sudden fashion which I found a bit strange. I didn’t get on with that too well.

I wondered what the etiquette was, whether we were supposed to stay quiet for the whole performance or whether we could clap at the end of each movement, because it happened after the third movement of this piece. It’s a bit like going to a play for the first time and clapping at the end of each act, or do you wait until the end of the play?

What did you think of the Saint-Saëns?

It wasn’t quite what I expected! It’s funny, the name and the most famous theme or melody from that piece that appears in the Babe film, sung by some mice, I knew it was a pop record before that as well, a really sentimental song that was a strong ballad (If I Had You). I really enjoyed most of it, it was melodically very accessible I thought, as was the Falla. I think if I was going along to hear some classical music for the first time I might try this because most of it was very accessible, and at one point when the music really picked up it really soared a few minutes in. I was watching two banks of strings either side of the conductor, and they looked like rowers on a slave ship or something. It was visually impressive. I thought the organ would be all-encompassing but it didn’t dominate the piece as much as I expected it to.

Thinking of your experience of the Proms, what appealed to you about the visit?

The fact that we were in the stalls area and people were standing, and it was a very mixed audience, it felt much more accessible than I was expecting – I thought it would be more elitist than that. That was good.

Would you change anything about the experience?

Apart from the bar prices?! I don’t think I would change anything particularly – maybe something in the way of an introduction, but then everything was covered in the brochure we had anyway.

Would you consider going again?

Definitely, yes.

Verdict: SUCCESS

BBC Proms 2017 – Charles Dutoit conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Saint-Saëns’ ‘Organ’ Symphony; Joshua Bell plays Lalo

Posted on by
Reply

Prom 40: Stéphanie d’Oustrac (mezzo-soprano), Joshua Bell (violin), Cameron Carpenter (organ), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Charles Dutoit

Falla El amor brujo (1914-5)

Lalo Symphonie Espagnole (1874)

Saint-Saëns Symphony no.3 in C minor Op.78 (1886)

Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 17 August 2017

You can listen to this Prom here for 28 days from the date of the performance

On paper, a sultry Prom for the middle of summer, capped by a colourful French symphony. In reality, even more substantial – a concert whose tuneful demeanour and performance panache really lifted the spirits, bringing new perspectives to works we might have erroneously pigeon holed as over familiar or under performed.

Into the latter category falls most of the music of Édouard Lalo, whose Symphonie espagnole, a passionate five movement work for orchestra with violin soloist, is the one work to really gain a foothold in the Proms. Lately however it has fallen out of favour, and Joshua Bell was bringing it back for the first time in 15 years. His evidence was persuasive, a performance full of character, wit and commitment that showed the French composer’s Spanish persuasions in a very positive light. The first two movements were a little on the chaste side, but that only heightened the bravura of the Intermezzo, where Bell was really able to let his hair down.

The finale was also a winner, its tune (memorably upgraded by Keith Emerson and The Nice) leaving an impression long after it had departed, and completing a convincing performance of a substantial work. It would be good to see more Lalo revived to the repertoire, for he is a composer of tuneful appeal with colourful orchestration. Bell (above) gave us a substantial bonus in a gorgeously floated encore of Massenet’s Méditation from his opera Thaïs.

Manuel de Falla also fulfils those two qualities, though his way with a melody is if anything even more exotic. El Amor Brujo (Love, The Magician) is packed full of memorably scored dance music that played right into the hands of a skilled interpreter such as Charles Dutoit. Under his baton the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra swooned and sighed, though unfortunately the contributions from mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d’Oustrac (above) were not ideally balanced from our vantage point in the Albert Hall, her notes falling short of the back of the Arena. Because of that the dances were easily the high point of what was otherwise a high quality performance.

And so to Saint-Saëns, and his Symphony no.3 – the Organ symphony, billed on account of the instrument’s role in the final movement. It was surely the last ten minutes of this work – elevated by pigs in the film Babe – that caused such queues for the arena and gallery, but it was particularly satisfying to be reminded of the work as a whole and its inventiveness.

This was surely the first occasion an organ had been used in this way before, and not just that – a piano too, the four handed part beautifully incorporated by Dutoit into the whole. Dutoit ensured the rhythmic invention of Saint-Saëns was to the fore in the first movement, the strings’ lines shimmering in the half light, while the second movement bloomed in a wondrous shade thanks to well-chosen settings by organist Cameron Carpenter (below) for his accompaniment of the strings plaintive but increasingly powerful theme.

A quickfire third movement brought rhythmic impetus again, the motto theme drumming its way firmly into the consciousness, and then it was the finale, where the balance between organ and orchestra was ideal. Dutoit, who has conducted this work for well over 30 years, relished the drama of the chorale theme and the orchestra’s rapturous response, but also brought forward the inner workings that Saint-Saëns uses to drive it forwards.

A final, personal note on Charles Dutoit, receiving his Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society before we heard the Saint-Saens – which incidentally was commissioned by the same body in 1886. In his recordings with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Dutoit has made some very special insights into French music that are I’m sure on the shelves of many a classical collector today. Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc and Ibert are just five of the composers to benefit from his special relationship with the orchestra – and provide just some of the reasons behind the ever-adventurous conductor’s modest receipt of the medal. He may be 81 but the creative fires still burn very keenly!

Ben Hogwood, with pictures (c) Chris Christodoulou

Stay tuned for another in Arcana’s Ask The Audience series, where Jamie Sellers will give his verdict on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Prom. Coming shortly! Meanwhile a Spotify playlist celebrating Charles Dutoit is below, containing some of the music from this concert.

On record: Renaud Capuçon plays the Bruch Violin Concerto no.1 and Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole

Posted on by
Reply

Featured recording: Lalo: Symphonie espagnole; Bruch: Violin Concerto no.1; Sarasate – Renaud Capuçon, Paavo Jarvi and the Orchestre de Paris (Erato)
lalo-capuconRenaud Capuçon, Paavo Jarvi and the Orchestre de Paris play arguably the best-loved work for violin and orchestra, Bruch‘s Violin Concerto no.1, and pair it with the sultry Symphonie Espagnole of Lalo. A virtuoso work by Pablo Sarasate makes up the trio.

What’s the music like?

These are two perennials of the repertoire for violin and orchestra, bursting with tunes. Bruch’s Violin Concerto no.1, the first of three he wrote, was dedicated to the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, as was Brahms’ Violin Concerto. This is the work by which Bruch is best known.

It is small wonder really, for it is highly romantic, setting the ideal balance between violin and orchestra, who share some wonderful tunes. The soft hearted Adagio brings a tear to the eye, while the outer movements have an invigorating energy.

Meanwhile the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, a five-movement piece that is essentially an extended concerto, brings some much-needed warmth. Lalo is a composer who has fallen out of fashion in the last few years, so it is good to have a new recording of this piece, as it has a few spiky and very catchy themes. If you like Bizet’s Carmen you will recognise his use of the Habanera, while the final Rondo has one of those tunes you won’t be able to stop whistling for the rest of the day!

Complementing the two bigger pieces is Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs). Lalo dedicated the Symphonie espagnole to Sarasate, who was a virtuoso violinist himself – and who also incorporates some memorable tunes in this shorter piece.

Does it all work?

Yes. Renaud Capuçon shares a birthday with Lalo (January 27) and will in fact be 40 this year. He is in great musical health, choosing a program that is definitely youthful in its tuneful profile.

His tone is especially beautiful in the Bruch, initially brooding but with an underlying sunny picture that comes through. The sun is hotter in the Symphonie espagnole, the more successful of the two bigger pieces here, and the one where Capuçon expresses himself with more fire.

The orchestral accompaniment from Paavo Jarvi and the Orchestre de Paris is ideal – clean and fresh, as you would want in a new recording of the often-heard Bruch. The Lalo is the best rendition here though, like a fresh sunny day.

Is it recommended?

Yes. A classical antidote to the January grind!

Listen on Spotify

You can judge for yourself by hearing the album on Spotify here: