This munificent collection has the air of a challenge thrown down with all the panache that comes of knowing that no-one else can match it. It's the sort of thing you can do when you are EMI. The competition just don't have the catalogue depth to match it. OK so they might have a few more recent recordings but in terms of still very good sounding analogue this is the business and at superbudget price.
Ibert had his frivolous ’twenties moments but for the rest he is a pleasing melodist with a fastidious and effective ear for orchestral effect.
I have known most of these recordings from having started exploring Ibert on LP during the period 1971-78. The covers of those albums are engraved in my memory.
His Divertissement is drawn from his incidental music for a production of a Goldoni play The Italian Straw Hat. It is an excuse for a brilliant weave of parody and display. The echoes here are largely of absurdist Satie, of Ravel's Ma Mère l'Oye in Cortege, of Prokofiev in parade and in the tempo di galop of the then 'madmen' of music such as Antheil, Ornstein and Cowell. Frémaux and the CBSO give this work a rowdy outing.
The Symphonie Marine was not played during Ibert’s life and only achieved performance one year after his death. There is no swelling oceanic sweep here; sketched in suggestions are the order of the day. It's a work that in its freshness and intricacy of detail fascinates. The supercharged whooping cascading effusions of Bacchanale are bound to impress but don't I recall another even more animalistic recording by Bernstein and the L'ORTF also on EMI? Written for the tenth anniversary of the BBC Third Programme, it's a superb riotous showpiece; rather the equivalent of Szymanowski's early Concert Overture and the first movement of Enescu's First Symphony.
Like the Symphonie Marine solo lines emerge repeatedly in the almost equally exuberant Louisville Concerto - so designated despite running only to concert overture length. It's clearly another successful artefact of Louisville's philanthropic scheme to put the city on the cultural map internationally - which the scheme did. Such a pity that First Edition CDs are no longer around to perpetuate the legacy.
Rather predictably the active and restless Bostoniana was a Charles Munch Tanglewood commission - in fact what they asked for was a symphony. Ibert died before going any further than this single movement which at times finds echo in Hindemith's big symphonies. The Tropismes was also not performed until after Ibert's death. It is in nine sections though here inconveniently in a single 25 minute track. It might have been intended as a ballet. The big piercingly searching and surging string writing of Bostoniana is also on show here but with a sultry swooning harmonic world which takes Ibert one romantically fevered pace towards Scriabin. It ends with a sequence of piled high superheated grandiloquent fanfares.
The Flute Concerto was written for Marcel Moyse and is flighty, suave and cool with a wondrously tender Andante and with an unusually long and brusque Allegro scherzando which seems to look back to the absurdist uproar of Divertissement. Like Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (and which other works I wonder?) Ouverture de Fetes was written for the 2500th anniversary of the Mikado's dynasty in Japan. It was premiered in 1942 having weathered the backwash from Japan's part in the war. It includes a fugal episode and is quite a weighty effort running to more than fifteen active and celebratory minutes. Nothing struck me as especially oriental about it.
Back to more familiar waters with the superlative suite Escales (Ports of Call). It is a most audacious and achieved series of pictures of the cultures looking out or from the Mediterranean littoral. These are lovely recordings with some truly beautiful impressionistic writing. While Divertissement bids fair to be his most instantly recognisable piece this is the one that deserves concert hall attention. The Tunis movement recalls Holst's Beni Mora in its evocation of the shadowed streets of the old city. The final Valencia is eager and bright with excitement and tickles the ear with some wonderful distanced Hispanic effects including the castanets and tambourines as well as the rapturously explosive Rhapsodie Espagnole style whoops in the final few moments.
The Don Quichotte songs have a related Iberian resonance. The songs are to words (not in the booklet) by Ronsard and Arnoux. The words are delivered with pleasing clarity so some French speakers should be able to follow the plot easily enough. The orchestral contribution is spare and well judged with guitar, harp, harpsichord, bassoon and oboe playing leading parts in establishing the Iberian milieu. But then we know from the Valencia movement of Escales that Ibert had all the right Spanish credentials. Well worth exploring if you have a predilection for economically scored and colour-soaked Hispanica.
A good concise note by Richard Langham Smith.
Interested in Ibert? Sorted.
Rob Barnett
see also review by Hubert Culot
The Flute Concerto is a concerto for flute and orchestra by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was jointly commissioned by Richard and Jody Nordlof for flutist Carol Wincenc and by Borders Group for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.[1] It was completed August 15, 1993 and premiered October 27, 1994 at Orchestra Hall in Detroit, with conductorHans Vonk leading Carol Wincenc and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.[2] The piece—specifically the third movement—is dedicated to the memory of James Bulger, an English toddler who was infamously murdered in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys.[1][2]
- 1Composition
Composition[edit]
Ibert Flute Concerto Program Notes For Luke. 6/2/2017 0 Comments. We are proud of the fact that we are Sheet music publishers for musicians. Redes, a Zurich Opera presentation of. Mozart's The Magic Flute for children, and Joni Mitchell's ballet. The Fiddler and the Drum (NAXOS.
Structure[edit]
Concert Program Notes
A performance of the Flute Concerto lasts approximately 23 minutes. The work is composed in five movements:
- Amhrán
- Alla Marcia
- Elegia
- Scherzo
- Amhrán
Style and influences[edit]
The work contains a number of Celtic music influences. In the program notes to the score, Rouse commented on the particularly Irish influences, saying:
The first and last movements bear the title 'Amhrán' (Gaelic for 'song') and are simple melodic elaborations for the solo flute over the accompaniment of orchestral strings. They were intended in a general way to evoke the traditions of Celtic, especially Irish, folk music but to couch the musical utterance in what I hoped would seem a more spiritual, even metaphysical, maner through the use of extremely slow tempi, perhaps not unlike some of the recordings of the Irish singer Enya.
The second and fourth movements are both fast in tempo. The second is a rather sprightly march which shares some of its material with the fourth, a scherzo which refers more and more as it progresses to that most Irish of dances, the jig. However, by the time the jig is stated in its most obvious form, the tempo has increased to the point that the music seems almost frantic and breathless in nature[1]
Instrumentation[edit]
The concerto is scored for a solo flute and orchestra comprising three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons (2nd doubling on contrabassoon), four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (three players), strings (violins I & II, violas, violoncellos, and double basses).[1]
Ibert Flute Concerto Imslp
Dedication[edit]
Regarding the dedication of the piece to James Bulger, Rouse wrote:
In a world of daily horrors too numerous and enormous to comprehend en masse, it seems that only isolated, individual tragedies serve to sensitize us to the potential harm man can do to his fellow. For me, one such instance was the abduction and brutal murder of the two-year old English lad James Bulger at the hands of a pair of ten-year old boys. I followed this case closely during the time I was composing my concerto and was unable to shake the horror of these events from my mind. The central movement of this work is an elegy dedicated to James Bulger's memory, a small token of remembrance for a life senselessly and cruelly snuffed out.[1]
Reception[edit]
Geoffrey Norris of Gramophone praised the piece, saying, 'It expresses the shock and incomprehension that we all experienced at that appalling, senseless crime, but at the same time it enshrines the beauty and innocence of an infant life so cruelly snuffed out.'[3] Michael Tumelty of The Herald lavished the work with praise, saying '..not only is it a brilliant concert piece [..], but it is actually a masterpiece.' Tumelty specifically praised the third movement, adding, 'In the achingly poignant music of that Elegy, there are two purely orchestral moments, where first the music subsides then, gathering its passion and strength, resumes its statement in a huge crescendo with the entire orchestra piling in at what amounts to an anguished, collective protest at the horror. It is a shattering moment.'[4]James R. Oestreich of The New York Times also noted the third movement, calling it 'the big, pulsating heart of the piece' and writing, 'This is a deeply stirring monument, carried for long moments by the strings and, eventually, the whole orchestra, as the flute basically steps aside.'[5]BBC Music Magazine's Stephen Maddock praised the influence of Celtic music, commenting, 'The outer movements – both entitled ‘Ànhran’, Gaelic for song, in recognition of the composer’s Celtic roots – are especially likeable, while the central Adagio confronts the terrible Bulger case more in sorrow than in anger.'[6]
Michael Dervan of The Irish Times was somewhat more critical of the concerto and called it 'all a bit self-consciously accessible.'[7] Steve Metcalf of the Hartford Courant called the piece 'a slighter work' in regards to Rouse's repertoire, but nevertheless described it as 'nicely put together.'[8] In 2006, David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer lauded the relevance of the concerto in a post-9/11 world, despite describing Rouse's use of Celtic influences as 'without irony' and noting similarities to Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3. Stearns ultimately called the concerto 'an island of truth' and complimented the flute writing, saying, 'The five-movement piece positions the soloist more as a protagonist than a competitor with a series of dialogues and soliloquies.'[9]
References[edit]
- ^ abcdeRouse, Christopher. Flute Concerto: Program Note by the Composer. 1993. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^ ab'Flute Concerto: Christopher Rouse'(PDF). New York Philharmonic: 31–32. October 2014. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Norris, Geoffrey (August 2013). 'ROUSE; IBERT Flute Concertos'. Gramophone. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Tumelty, Michael (October 4, 2014). 'Rouse's flute concerto is a perfectly formed arc'. The Herald. Newsquest. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Oestreich, James R. (October 31, 2014). 'Sentimental Harmonies: Leonard Slatkin Leads the Philharmonic in Copland and Rouse'. The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2015.
- ^Maddock, Stephen (January 20, 2012). 'Rouse: Symphony No. 2; Flute Concerto; Phaethon'. BBC Music Magazine. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Dervan, Michael (July 5, 2013). 'Rouse: Flute Concerto; Ibert: Flute Concerto; Frank Martin: Ballade'. The Irish Times. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Metcalf, Steve (May 29, 1997). 'Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 2'. Hartford Courant. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
- ^Stearns, David Patrick (March 4, 2006). 'Time is right for the truth of 'Flute Concerto''. The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia Media Network. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
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