Albert Roussel: Symphonies 1-4

Editorial Reviews
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The fact that Roussel's four symphonies aren't better known is a pity, but surely the fault of his own countrymen. Symphonies were never a French specialty, and of the four great French practitioners of the symphonic art at the first decades of this century (Honegger, Roussel, Tournemire, and Magnard), only Honegger seems to have firmly established himself in the international repertoire. While Roussel's Third was championed by conductors like Charles Munch and Leonard Bernstein, even in France the remaining works are neglected. They are, however, one and all, excellently crafted pieces: tuneful, pithy, and very listenable. If you like one, you'll like them all; so this first-rate set is both good listening and good sense. --David Hurwitz

Albert Roussel: Symphonies 1-4, Music, Albert Roussel, Edmund Rubbra, Marek Janowski, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, 20th/21st Century Symphony, Classical, Classical Music, Romantic Symphony, Symphonic

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brilliance

Perfect Performances

Albert Roussel: Symphonies 1-4

Manufacturer: RCA
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Romantic | Symphonies | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music
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Amazon.com

The fact that Roussel's four symphonies aren't better known is a pity, but surely the fault of his own countrymen. Symphonies were never a French specialty, and of the four great French practitioners of the symphonic art at the first decades of this century (Honegger, Roussel, Tournemire, and Magnard), only Honegger seems to have firmly established himself in the international repertoire. While Roussel's Third was championed by conductors like Charles Munch and Leonard Bernstein, even in France the remaining works are neglected. They are, however, one and all, excellently crafted pieces: tuneful, pithy, and very listenable. If you like one, you'll like them all; so this first-rate set is both good listening and good sense. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

brilliance.......2007-05-25

This cycle, which came out in 1996, is the first modern stereo cycle of Roussel's complete symphonies. Marek Janowski brings such warmth, decision, and color to these diverse works. Now that these symphonies are being somewhat implemented in the standard repertoire, a new interest is coming out, notably Christoph Eschenbach's recordings with the Orchestre d'Paris on the Ondine label. As excited as I was with Eschenbach's efforts, I believe that Janowski's cycle remains unparallelled, especially as far as flow and overall shape is concerned. In these recordings, there is a true brilliance of sound, color, vivacity and warmth, but also each work maintains real flow and identity, which I feel is lost in Eschenbach's. In my opinion, these are the hallmark recordings.

Perfect Performances.......2007-04-28

There has been some interest in recording the symphonies of Albert Roussel in recent months, particularly by Christoph Eschenbach. This set by Marek Janowski was issued in 1996 and remains among the top recordings of Roussel's symphonies.

The First Symphony (Le poeme de-la foret) was composed in 1906 and is a sublime evocation of nature, reminding one of the later Spider's Feast. The symphony is in four movements and depicts a forest in each season beginning with winter. The longest movement is the fourth where Roussel calls upon his interest in Classics by depicting a dance of fauns and dryads. Roussel was 40 when his first symphony was performed and he was not to write another for 10 years.

The Second Symphony (1921) is worlds apart from his First. In the time between the symphonies, Roussel married and made an extended visit to India. He was inspired to write his opera-ballet Padmavati and his music takes on a mystical influence. The first movement (of three) opens with mysterious sounding chords, the music slowly, quietly shaped. Eventually, the tempo become faster, like a whirling dance and the music is picked up by the full orchestra. The middle movement is lighter and pastoral with a lively melody that slowly becomes more mysterious and agitated. The third movement opens as the first with a mysterious and craggy theme which gives way to faster tempi. The Second symphony has an experimental feel as if Roussel was searching for a new musical language that was not truly resolved in this work; the transformation was complete by the time of his next symphony.

The Third Symphony (1930 - for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony) is the best known and exuberant, written in the same neoclassical style as Bacchus et Ariade. The music exudes vitality and while the music may sound abrasive it is mere dissonant not atonal. The Third Symphony beings with a five note motto theme that is used throughout the symphony. The first movement is characterized by daring rhythms and the music has a restless motion. The second movement is quiet and reflective with a trio section with a playful melody passed of between sections of the orchestra. The third movement brings a lively dance-like melody beautifully orchestrated and the finale brings the symphony to a triumphant close restating the transformed motto theme and a whirlwind of melodies that make me want more.

The Forth Symphony (1934) advanced Roussel's ideas by eliminating the cyclical themes and wrote the movements with more flexible tempos rather than the three sections. The symphony begins with a short, brooding introduction and then takes off with lively dance-like melody that is developed and ends abruptly. The second movement is a reflective and brooding Lento molto that builds to a triumphant passage for brass and strings. The Scherzo that follows is charming and jubilant, and also comes to an abrupt stop. The Finale is one of Roussel's best achievements where his initial theme is built on and transformed; the music is brought to a brilliant conclusion.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France plays the symphonies beautifully and the recordings are clear and well-balanced.

Albert Roussel: Symphonies Nos. 1 "Le Poème de la forêt" & 4

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Albert Roussel: Symphonies Nos. 1 "Le Poème de la forêt" & 4

Manufacturer: Ondine
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B000MRA7F4
Release Date: 2007-04-10

Tracks:

I. Foret D'hiver
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III. Allegro Scherzando
IV. Allegro Molto

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Beware Of The "Complete Set" Syndrome
Great Music From Between the Two Wars
REGARDING ROUSSEL.......
worth investigating

Roussel: Symphonies 1-4

Manufacturer: Elektra / Wea
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B00000J7OY
Release Date: 1999-06-08

Tracks:

Symphony No. 1, Op. 7 'Le Poeme De La Foret' In D-Minor: Foret d'Hiver
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Customer Reviews:

Beware Of The "Complete Set" Syndrome.......2004-05-12

To my mind, Albert Roussel (1869-1937) is the most under-appreciated symphonic genius of the 20th Century. Why that is so I cannot explain. Roussel's orchestral palette is unique and distinctive; once heard, his special sound cannot be mistaken for that of anyone else. I think part of the problem is performance-related: there really haven't been many great performances to hear. More to the point, none of the truly outstanding accounts are to be found in a "complete set," certainly not this rather pedestrian one from Charles Dutoit.

I decided recently to let this Dutoit set go - in terms of both playing and interpretation, it strikes me as decidedly second rate. Of course, nothing would please me more than to find a complete set of a composer's works with uniformly excellent performances, but with the possible exception of Leppard's Handel on Phillips and a few others, that almost never happens. Not that I "have it in" for Dutoit: I am also letting go of what is virtually the only "complete set" alternative - the Marek Janowski/Radio France collection on now deleted RCA CDs. The latter is, to my ears, distinctly preferable to Dutoit's - it's better played across the board and more richly recorded - but it suffers from an uninspired proficiency that became ever clearer as I made comparisons with various individual perofrmances.

Over the past year I have tried to hear the alternatives in each work, and I managed to audition about 90% of them. That wasn't as big an undertaking as you might suppose - there really aren't that many alternatives available, and "historic" performances are few and far between. You won't find recommended accounts here by conductors who tried out a work for a single season and then cranked out the obligatory record. So there is no over-done grandstanding from Bernstein, no faceless "crank out a sausage" from Jarvi, no homogenized juggernaut a la Karajan, and no over-analytical embalming courtesy of Boulez. What I want to share with you is a distinctive handful of really memorable readings from those few conductors who, to my taste, really come to grips with the demands of Roussel's music. Regrettably, several are on out of print CDs and one has never been transferred from LP. But then, who ever said that finding gold was easy?

1st Symphony: Leif Segerstam's reading with the Rhineland-Pfalz State Philharmonic (who would have known?) on Cybelia 801 simply crawls with atmospheric touches - it is stunning. What a nice surprise: I have never much cared for Segerstam's Mahler. With it is "Resurrection" (the first work for full orchestra, some 3 years before Roussel composed the 1st in 1906) and the late (1936) Rapsodie Flamande (Flemish Rhapsody), both in wonderful readings by Pierre Stoll, a conductor hitherto unknown to me.

2nd Symphony: My sole reason for getting Janowski's set was to hear this work in a better reading than Dutoit's. Like Prokofiev and his 2nd, Roussel's is arguably his most daring work. And now I have the first-ever recording (1969!): Martinon with the Orchestre National de L'ORTF is just dazzling - when he was on he was really ON. He was a composition pupil of Roussel and was trained by Munch - and it really shows. This is on Erato 2564 60577-2 and can be found in Europe. The coupling - a complete "Spider's Feast," also with Martinon, is quite simply THE greatest performance ever. How is it that Chicago failed to appreciate Martinon? After only 5 years he was replaced by (gulp!) Solti.

Symphony #3 & #4: These symphonies have both received a number of very fine performances. Munch left several - I think his best 3rd was the live 1967 account, available only in a very expensive Chicago Symphony set (that orchestra had already been "prepared" by Martinon). His studio recordings of 3 and 4 (1965)on Erato 2292-45678-2 are also very good (the live ones on Disques Montaigne have pretty rough sound). Perhaps the best 3 and 4 currently on CD is the fabulous 1965 Cluytens, with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra (helas! they no longer exist) on Testament SBT 1239. It is coupled with equally great Cluytens readings of the Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and the 2nd Suite from Bacchus et Ariane. Ernest Bour also left inspired live radio broadcasts of 3-4 with the SWS Stuttgart on Astree 7800 (one of two superb 4-disc collections of 20th Century masterpieces that should be in any serious collection of modern music). There was also a wonderful #4 by George Tzipine on a rather ancient Capitol LP.

These are all "in the vein" performances of great distinction. Some of them will be hard to find - but they are definitely worth searching out. Should you obtain them and enjoy the same "epiphany" they gave me, then I will feel amply rewarded for the effort spent in writing this review.

Great Music From Between the Two Wars.......2001-03-12

Like Prokofiev, Roussel was deeply infuenced by Debussy in his earlier works. This is especially evident in Symphony 1, "Poem of the Forest". Coming to music late in his life, however, Roussel never seems to have really grasped the significance of the great upheavals produced in modern music by Stravinsky and Schoenberg. However, the Great War did have an enormous impact on his work; in his Symphony 2 he put aside the imporessionistic palette and turned inward. This symphony is very introspective and even somewhat gloomy. It is a very complex work which bears listening to repeatedly before one can sufficiently appreciate it. For this reason, I have to disagree with the previous reviewer's assessment of the Second. It is a truly noble work, in my opinion. Symphony 3 is of course the high point in Roussel's creative life. At least one notable musicologist has even called it one of the greatest symphonies of the XXth century. It has a lot of the same elan vital as Nielson's Espansiva. Symphony 4 is predominantly optimistic in tone - which is ironic, because it was written in the late thirties; only a few years later, Roussel's beloved France would lie prostrate under the scourge of Hitler's Third Reich. Overall, this is an excellent introduction to one of the greatest French composers of the twentieth century, whose music captures a lot of the ambivalence of that period "entre les deux guerres".

REGARDING ROUSSEL..............2000-11-28

Roussel (1869-1937) is a fascinating, if not entirely memorable or original, composer who stands awkwardly in three doorways simultaneously: Neo-Romanticism, Impressionism and a distinctive early "modernism." [And for most of us, "The Spider's Feast" is as far as we've traversed Roussel.]

Dutoit and the ORTF National Orchestra offer up, however, well-defined, atmospheric readings of Roussel's rather neglected four symphonies on this bargain twofer and give us a rare glimpse into his remarkable musical development. For this reason, alone, the symphonies, which span the years 1906-1934, deserve our attention, if, perhaps, not our undying affection.

Most appealing is Symphony No. 1, Op. 7 ("Poem of the Forest") whose four movements--- winter, spring, summer, fall--- constitute musical "impressions," rather than typical descriptive aural poems or "pictures." You'll not hear chirping birds here, or howling winds. Roussel's tonal palette is far more sophisticated; yet, his forest is palpable and colorful. A most attractive nature walk... of the cerebral kind.

Least appealing is his Symphony No. 2, Op. 23, of 1921, which is annoyingly experimental and abrassive, especially in the two outer movements--- both of which outstay their quarter-hour-apiece welcome all too slowly.

Symphonies No. 3, Op. 42 and No. 4, Op. 53 shed Impressionism entirely and become, as Roussel observed, "more pruned, more distilled, more schematized... music which satisfies itself." In this Roussel succeeds entirely; his last two symphonies are models of Neo-Classicism and, in many ways, pay hommage to his former teacher, Vincent d'Indy.

The Roussel symphonies offer nothing profound, nothing truly emotional; however, there are enough unique musical twists and turns to delight any symphonist not familiar with this composer. And, too, the price, not prohibitive certainly, might prompt you to consider hearing these CDs.

worth investigating.......2000-05-23

These are delightful, delicately orchestrated symphonies, well played by Dutoit and his Orchestra. I've only purchased No. 2 and 4 (in an earlier 1 CD compilation) and they never fail to entertain and delight. Though not perfect, the orchestra sound is lush and well recorded.

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