Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich / Paavo Järvi TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 - Francesca da Rimini

 

SYMPHONY No. 5 - FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

 

Frankfurt Radio Symphony / Paavo Järvi FRANZ SCHMIDT Complete Symphonies

COMPLETE SYMPHONIES

Estonian Festival Orchestra / Paavo Järvi ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR Mythos

MYTHOS

Khatia Buniatishvili / Paavo Järvi / Orchestre de Paris CHOPIN

Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is a phenomenon, and kudos to Sony Classical for snagging her! This is Chopin of the old school, with massive interposition of the performer between music and listener. And it's glorious. The Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35, is an absolutely original reading, with that black belt of classical pianism, a fresh rendition of the famous funeral march, with real involvement in the emotional content of the movement. This is a Chopin funeral march played after someone actually died, and the moment of chilly nihilism that serves as the finale is really a bit scary here. The big Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, is hardly less stirring. Buniatishvili races forward at times, delays as if in torture at other times, and has the skills and the raw power to pull it all off. Are there problems? Sure. It's true that a 19th-century virtuoso recital would have freely mixed orchestral and solo music, but the live performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, doesn't quite fit here, partly because the acoustic of the Salle Pleyel in Paris is nothing like that of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, where the other pieces were recorded. And a few of Buniatishvili's dynamic contrasts go beyond anything Chopin could have accomplished with his own piano or even intended. But these are the flaws that serve only to point up the considerable accomplishments elsewhere. This is the kind of Chopin playing that people used to line up to hear. (James Manheim)

Khatia Buniatishvili / Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Paavo Järvi RACHMANINOFF Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3

A highlight of Khatia's recording career where she reunites with Paavo Järvi for her first orchestral recording in four years. The recording includes Rachmaninoff 2 & 3 - rarely combined on one CD and two blockbuster concertos of the late-romantic repertoire - especially the 2nd concerto was featured in many famous movies such as Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955) or Clint Eastwoods' film Hereafter (2010). The 3rd concerto was prominently featured in Shine (1996) with David Helfgott. This album was recorded with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, at Rudolfinum, Dvorak Hall, Prague.

Viktoria Mullova / Paavo Järvi ARVO PÄRT

Immutable, austere, impassable – the strength of Arvo Pärt’s music lies in its ability to project an image as powerful and complete as the religious iconography it often seeks to replicate.

This is not music that hinges on sudden shifts and sharp contrasts. However, at its core lies the age-old dichotomy between freedom and control, head and heart – or ‘mathematics … and love’, as Pärt himself put it in last month’s Gramophone feature on this recording. Keeping both elements in check – and in balance with one another – remains key.

The Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova brilliantly manages to tease out these dichotomies on this new recording of Pärt’s works for violin and orchestra. In Fratres, she approaches each variation from a different angle. Sap and rosin fly off the bow in the coruscating arpeggio figurations of the opening chord sequence. Mullova’s skill here is to ratchet up the intensity by gradually imparting weight and purpose to the lowest note in each pattern. Lighter feather-bedding is applied in the fourth variation’s rapid triadic ostinatos, creating an almost symphonic effect. Intensity is maintained throughout the double-stopped variation but the expression never becomes exaggerated. There is no let up – and very little rubato – until Mullova finally eases off during the final ‘flautando’ variation.

Mullova’s instinct is to know when and where to foreground these shifting dichotomies. They gradually dissipate during the two-movement Tabula rasa and dissolve completely by the time we get to Spiegel im Spiegel. Aided in Tabula rasa by the equally impressive Florian Donderer on second violin, the overall shape of the work hinges on maintaining a more or less exact proportional relationship of 1:2 between both movements. Gidon Kremer’s premiere recording of the work (ECM), still a benchmark in many respects, is close at 9'36" and 16'50" respectively. But, at 10'57" and 20'35", Mullova is pretty much bang-on.

Pärt was said to have been very pleased with the way the recording sessions went with Mullova, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and one can certainly understand why. Get the mathematics right and the love will take care of itself. (Pwyll ap Siôn / Gramophone)

Anne Gastinel / Nicholas Angelich / Gil Shaham / Andreas Ottensamer / Frankfurt Radio Symphony / Paavo Järvi BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto - Trio Op. 11

...the special feature of this work is its highly individual form: it’s a concertante work, but it’s also genuine chamber music. This mixture of genres, this duality, isn’t always easy to handle: Gil, Nicholas and I form a trio, but one in which each member takes on a solo part. There’s a real balance to be found, which is harder than when there are only two soloists – as in the Brahms Double Concerto, for example. All through the work, there’s continual inter- action between the soloists, and between the trio and the orchestra. 

This concerto can easily become just a superposition of talents if the three soloists are not as ‘connected’ as they are in chamber music. I’ve often thought that the ideal solution was to ask an existing trio to perform it. The challenge of this recording was to form a trio that could play a concertante work with an orchestra, and to create a group that would function naturally and intuitively. I strongly felt that was what was needed. That’s why I immediately thought of Nicholas and Gil. Nicholas, whom I’ve known for a very long time now, has the rare quality of being both a great soloist and a great chamber musician. He always listens to his partners, and his playing is magni cent. As to Gil, whom I admire and whose playing I really love, he’s someone who is characterised by perpetual exchange and mobility; he too is a great listener, so generous and open to other people’s ideas that it’s sheer delight to play with him. We didn’t know each other, except from hearing recordings or concerts, but things came together quite naturally. The three of us met in Paris to play through the work before meeting the orchestra, about a month and a half before the concerts. That rehearsal is still a wonderful memory: everything was so natural, so self-evident between us! We all felt the same thing, that very spontaneous reaction when you make music together, you phrase together . . . That’s the magic of rst meetings, sometimes. 

The orchestra is also very present in this piece; its part is very important. It doesn’t just ac- company the soloists. We’re dealing here with a real Beethoven symphony, featuring a trio of soloists that reacts to the orchestra in a permanent give-and-take... (Anne Gastinel)

Philharmonia Orchestra / Paavo Järvi NIELSEN Flute Concerto - Clarinet Concert - Aladdin Suite

Carl Nielsen's two late woodwind concertos are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra with its own principals, in live recordings (no applause) at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Both works were conceived as portraits of their first soloists. Samuel Coles neatly personifies the fastidious Gilbert Jespersen, maintaining elegance and integrity in response to the intrusions of the orchestra, including a particularly obnoxious bass trombone. The controlled orchestral playing and the natural sound balance create a nice sense of chamber-music interplay between the soloist and his colleagues—including, sensibly, a solo violin rather than a whole section for the flickering runs at 2:35 in the first movement. Mark van de Wiel is equally convincing as the choleric Aage Oxenvad, responding angrily to the orchestra, and in the virtuoso cadenzas equally capable of picking a fight with himself. Unfortunately, the side drum, which frequently eggs him on, all but disappears from the balance at lower dynamic levels.

A rival account of the concertos by the New York Philharmonic with its principals under Alan Gilbert, on Dacapo, boasts equally fine solo and orchestral playing, but the recording shines more of a spotlight on the soloists (and on a larger-than-life trombone). That disc completes the set of Nielsen's concertos with an outstanding account of the Violin Concerto by Nikolaj Znaider. This one adds a colourful studio recording of the Suite from the music for the play Aladdin, with its Ivesian depiction of 'The Marketplace in Ispahan' in four superimposed, unrelated strands of music. (BBC Music Magazine)

Steven Isserlis / Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra / Paavo Järvi PROKOFIEV - SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos

Prokofiev’s demanding, conceptually lopsided Cello Concerto, failed at the box office and has been little heard. Indeed, the only significant on-disc competition for Steven Isserlis’s blazing live account comes from the 2000 recording made by the late Alexander Ivashkin. With a Russian cellist and orchestra, the music sounds deceptively ‘Soviet’ so that we experience it counterfactually as a variant of the entity it would become years later when refashioned for Mstislav Rostropovich as the Symphony-Concerto, Op 125. Isserlis’s reading may yet mark a step change in the reception history of the 1930s original. No matter that Paavo Järvi’s accompaniment feels super-efficient rather than comparably spontaneous. Applause is excised.

While you might not consider the hard-edged companion concerto a natural Isserlis piece, the cellist has played it a good deal. Distinctly brisk, except in the initial Allegretto, the new studio interpretation is flexible rather than lightweight or disconnected in feeling, with no lack of soulful emoting. In the first movement Isserlis conjures some surprising, visceral sounds from his instrument, ratcheting up the tension with a febrile, nervy vibrato up high. Being less comatose than usual, the second movement can afford to proceed in longer breaths, the not-quite-immaculate solo line spurning vibrato one moment, sliding romantically the next.

Yes, Rostropovich was grand and implacable, more lyrical too in a sense, but you’ll have one or other of his Shostakovich recordings already and he was understandably committed to the revamped version of the Prokofiev. The present disc has its own built-in encore, as arranged by Gregor Piatigorsky, the émigré virtuoso for whom Prokofiev began his concerto and with whom Isserlis himself intended to study. The soloist contributes his own lively and individualistic booklet-notes, enhancing the value of a fascinating, I’d say unmissable project. Sympathetic miking ensures that his relatively modest sound is never swamped even if the suggestion of insectile buzzing is not wholly avoided. (Gramophone)

THORSTEN ENCKE A Portrait

A Portrait of the composer  Thorsten Encke „When you embark on an artistic project, structural considerations can serve as a spark of inspiration. Like an architect, you roll out a blueprint, jot down a series of notes, and establish a basic framework of interval relations. Then you thoughtfully furnish the interior by relating motifs to one another and assigning them dramatic roles within the musical narrative. All of this is certainly necessary. But then, new ideas take you on detours, unplanned inspiration imposes itself on your thoughts, and the structural spark of inspiration dwindles with each new effort. The work acquires a life of its own; it wants to grow beyond its former limits. As an artist, you have to surrender and try to sense where the journey leads you.
A wrestling match often arises between what was planned and what is possible: the delicate task of choosing the most promising path that branches off into the scrub. One needs to remain open to new possibilities while becoming confident in the consistency of one’s ideas. That is what inspiration is all about. One should always attempt to achieve a balance between formal construction and sheer inventiveness. Invention should take precedence over structure; in the best of cases, the latter remains under the surface as a kind of firm inner cohesion.
Invention is what shines in a work; it is what astounds the listener. On the other hand, an overtly visible structure is nothing more than a skeleton, placed in evidence to satisfy our anatomical curiosity. “Music is life; it is movement, rhythm, and Gestalt.” That is what a female audience member once said to me after a concert, and I agree. The listener has the right to expect such things from a musical work: movement, rhythm, and, most of all, Gestalt, e.g., a form one can grasp. The Gestalt confronts the listener and offers itself as a partner in dialogue. The listener decides whether she wants to enter into that dialogue; she decides how she perceives the Gestalt, and whether she will let herself be moved. If the listener is willing to actively participate in that process, she is creating the work herself. Only the Gestalt offers us an inkling of the great fabric of life, a shimmering reflection of eternity. Whenever music inspires a listener in this way, it manages to fulfill its most noble purpose.
As a composer, I spend many hours alone at my desk, painstakingly fleshing out my ideas. The written score reduces the vast array of sonorities I had previously imagined. It obliges me to formulate a clear vision, without blurring the contours. The score’s limitations force us to become inventive. The problem of notation in itself is what ultimately leads us to express ourselves in new ways. What is my current personal motto? This, perhaps: to retain a love of experiment in terms of content and expression; to remain clear in my musical language.

Renaud Capuçon / Paavo Järvi / Orchestre de Paris LALO Symphonie Espagnole SARASATE Zigeunerweisen BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1

Renaud Capuçon exudes a youthful air, but, now firmly established as one of the world’s leading violinists, he celebrates his 40th birthday on January 27th 2016. This release of the best-known works of three composers – Edouard Lalo, Pablo de Sarasate and Max Bruch – marks this important personal occasion in a suitably festive fashion. Capuçon made the recordings with Paavo Järvi and the Orchestre de Paris at the orchestra’s new home, the French capital’s Philharmonie, which opened in early 2015 and was immediately hailed for its superb acoustics. The Bruch concerto became the first piece to be recorded there, in May 2015.

As it happens, Capuçon shares a birthday with Edouard Lalo, born in 1823 – and with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart too! Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, first performed in Paris in 1874, inhabits the same Franco-Spanish musical world as Bizet’s Carmen, which received its premiere the following year. The piece also has a special connection with both Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen [Gypsy Airs] and Bruch’s Concerto No1, as Renaud Capuçon explains:

“These three works, first heard between 1868 and 1878, are among the most famous in the history of the violin, and there are links of friendship and respect between their three composers – Lalo, Sarasate and Bruch: Lalo dedicated his Symphonie espagnole to Sarasate [born in northern Spain and one of the most celebrated violinists of his time]. Bruch dedicated his Scottish Fantasy to Sarasate some years later, but it was the great Joseph Joachim who gave the first performance of Bruch’s Concerto No 1.”

All three pieces also have a special significance for Capuçon: “I first approached these works when I was 12 years old and studying at the Paris Conservatoire with Veda Reynolds [a celebrated American violin teacher]. I played the Bruch in my first competitions; the Lalo was the first piece I played to Gerard Poulet [Capuçon’s other teacher at the Paris Conservatoire] and the Sarasate featured in my first proper recital."

The personal nature of this album is further emphasised by Renaud Capuçon’s wish to dedicate it to the memories of two people who meant a great deal to him: the broadcaster Jacques Chancel, who died in December 2014, and his father-in-law Gratien Ferrari, who died in October 2015.

Capuçon’s credentials in this kind of Romantic music are made clear in reviews of past performances and recordings. When he played the Lalo in London in 2012, the Guardian praised him for capturing “the full measure of the seriousness behind its grace and wit. Capuçon played with virile agility and tremendous nobility of tone,” while The Times extolled a “gorgeous performance from violin soloist Renaud Capuçon, laidback in manner, but so nimble, so fiery.” The Bruch concerto – with its rhapsodic first movement and energetic, dancing finale is close in spirit to the Brahms Violin Concerto, composed in 1878 and also dedicated to Joseph Joachim. Capuçon’s recording of the Brahms was released in 2012. Reviewing the CD, the Telegraph wrote that: “Capuçon has an impressive grasp of the concerto’s expressive contours, using his technical arsenal with finesse and tracing the music’s breadth of line and its arching shapes while maintaining its inner momentum. The rhythmic punch and energy of the finale are echoed by the orchestra’s powerful attack and buoyancy ... This is altogether a remarkable disc.” (Presto Classical)

Antoine Tamestit HINDEMITH Bratsche!

Born in Paris in 1979, Antoine Tamestit was initially inspired by his teachers Jean Sulem, Jesse Levine and Tabea Zimmermann, and soon came to international prominence by winning, in rapid succession, the Maurice Vieux Competition, the William Primrose Competition, the Young Concert Artists Competition in New York, and the ARD Competition in Munich. With the support of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Foundation and several important awards (Deutschlandfunk-Förderpreis, Victoires de la Musique, Crédit Suisse), he quickly became one of the most sought-after violists of his generation.

In his ceaseless search for musical encounters, Antoine Tamestit nourishes a passion for chamber music which has taken him from Lockenhaus to Verbier, Nantes, Kronberg, Lucerne, Schwarzenberg, and Jerusalem. His multiple collaborations with such musicians as the soprano Sandrine Piau in Schubert, the Hagen Quartet in Mozart and the pianist Nicholas Angelich in Brahms, to name but a few, have become his daily inspiration. He has explored the fascinating repertoire of the duo sonata with Markus Hadulla for more than ten years now, and in 2008 he finally realised his dream of a string trio by founding the Trio Zimmermann with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Christian Poltera. He also likes to champion the unique concerto repertoire for viola, from Mozart to Schnittke by way of Hindemith, Bartók and Berlioz, whom he rediscovered with Marc Minkowski. He delights in appearing with the great orchestras of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo, under such conductors as Marek Janowski, Louis Langrée, Paavo Järvi, and Myung-Whun Chung, not to mention the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Riccardo Muti.

Having premiered new compositions by his father Gérard Tamestit from very early in his career, he has developed an insatiable curiosity about new music. With Tabea Zimmermann he has recorded George Benjamin’s Viola, Viola and Mantovani’s Double Concerto; he has given the first performances in several capital cities of Olga Neuwirth’s Remnants of Songs and works by Betsy Jolas, and has commissioned a forthcoming concerto from Jörg Widmann. In his teaching at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, he shares with his students a vision of an instrument with an infinite sound-palette.

Since 2008 he has found his voice with one of the very few Stradivarius violas, the ‘Mahler’, made in 1672, which is generously loaned to him by the Habisreutinger Foundation.

Viktoria Mullova PROKOFIEV

Viktoria Mullova's ONYX album is an all Prokofiev affair recorded live, with the lyrical 2nd violin concerto joined with the solo violin sonata and the sonata for two violins. Robert Soetens premiered the Duo Sonata in Paris in December 1932, partnered by Samuel Dushkin, for whom Stravinsky had recently composed a Violin Concerto. Knowing of Prokofiev's rivalry with Stravinsky, Soetens persuaded Prokofiev to write him a concerto. Composed in 1935 just before Prokofiev resettled in Soviet Russia, the Second Violin Concerto includes in its central movement one of his most celebrated long-arching melodies. The Solo Sonata was an official commission towards the end of Prokofiev's life. Originally intended for an ensemble of talented child violinists, Prokofiev so wrote the work that it could equally be played by a soloist. Paavo Jarvi and Viktoria Mullova have been close musical collaborators for many years. (Arkiv Music)

Hilary Hahn MOZART 5 - VIEUXTEMPS 4 Violin Concertos

Hilary Hahn’s newest album, Mozart 5, Vieuxtemps 4 – Violin Concertos, is her first recording with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Järvi, after performing and touring with the ensemble and conductor for many years. The disc releases on March 31, and is Hahn’s first orchestral offering since her 2010 pairing of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and Jennifer Higdon’s Pulitzer-prize winning violin concerto, which was written for Hahn. With this new album, she returns to core violin repertoire, hot on the heels of her critically-acclaimed, Grammy-winning album of 27 commissioned short pieces, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, and an improvised recording with prepared pianist Hauschka, titled Silfra.
Mozart 5, Vieuxtemps 4 also brings Hahn full circle, after more than three decades of violin playing, to two concertos that have been part of her repertoire since she was ten years old. Vieuxtemps’s Violin Concerto No. 4 was the last large piece she learned with Klara Berkovich, her teacher from ages five to ten. Several months later, Mozart 5 was the first concerto that Jascha Brodsky taught her at the Curtis Institute of Music. Berkovich began her violin studies in Odessa and went on to teach in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) before emigrating to the States. Brodsky was one of the last pupils of the legendary Eugène Ysaÿe, who, coincidentally, was a star student of Vieuxtemps, making Vieuxtemps Hahn’s musical great-grandfather in the violinist family tree.

Both concertos are part of Hahn’s active performance repertoire, and both were written by composers who were violin virtuosos in their own right. Hahn writes, “It’s fun to delve into [Mozart’s] ingenuity and emotional directness, his writing speaking directly to listeners while performers delight in his myriad clever phrases. As a result, Mozart improves moods; when I look around the stage at people playing his works, I always see smiles.” On this recording, Hahn plays the cadenzas by Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.

Like Mozart, Vieuxtemps initially learned violin from his father and toured Europe as a prodigy. When he wrote Concerto No. 4, he was living in St. Petersburg, where he was a court violinist to Tsar Nicholas I and taught violin at the Conservatory. “This concerto is operatically lyrical and demands flexibility, panache, focus, a flair for drama, and chamber-music-style unity even in its most symphonic dimensions,” Hahn explains.

Of the collaboration for this album, Hahn writes, “One of my favorite things about working on a piece over many years is the chance to experiment broadly with expression, concepts, and technique — on my own and with my colleagues. When those colleagues have been musical partners for a long time, as is the case with Paavo Järvi and The Deutsche KammerphilharmonieBremen, our shared access to the imaginative aspects of music is immediate and honest. Trying a new idea is as natural as breathing, and challenging each other’s musical inclinations is like conversing with your oldest and closest friends.”

Isabelle van Keulen / City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Paavo Järvi ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR Exodus

“There’s something almost physical about the way in which Tüür moves and shapes the sound masses that his textures generate, so that the music offers a variety of perspectives – on one level the intricate construction offers constantly changing patterns and arrays, on another the sheer weight of sound is sculpted into large-scale gestures, so that the ear switches from one to the other.” Andrew Clements’s description, in The Guardian, of Tüür’s “Exodus” can be applied, with no less justification, to the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and “Aditus”. There is a new physicality to Tüür’s music, the Estonian composer concurs: “This development started with the Cello Concerto (refer to the ECM album Flux, recorded 1998), and one of the main issues now is dealing with the energetic forces in music. All the different compositional tools employed – the different rhythmic patterns, and chord structures and harmonic progressions – are not aims in themselves but ways of forming and focussing the energetic development. I pay very much attention to moving between the different levels of energy – how the energy flows, how the inner drama is building. It’s something I’m working with very consciously for five or six years now.”
All three pieces on the present album are premiere recordings, made with the participation of the composer. Of the genesis of the Violin Concerto, Tüür says, “The very first idea was to build up a continuously changing relationship between the soloist and the orchestra. In the first movement the soloist makes a statement that the orchestra picks up, and changes it in a rather unexpected direction. Then the violin starts again, and again the orchestra picks up the material and transforms it in a different way. It’s always a kind of surrealistic treatment and this was the conceptual basis. And having made my choices about material – scales, rows and harmonic progressions – I almost always followed my spontaneous imagination in the writing I never had a wish to write a concerto for virtuoso soloist where the orchestra is providing accompaniment. The music is always filtered through the orchestra when it returns to the soloist. It’s always developed at a different level.”

Paavo Järvi / Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR Seventh Symphony - Piano Concerto

The sixth ECM New Series album by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür presents two major works, commissioned by the Hessische Rundfunk and given their premieres by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestra. Both works are powered by what Tüür calls his “vectorial writing method”, a means of developing pieces from “a source code – a gene which, as it mutates and grows, connects the dots in the fabric of the whole composition.” The process, already reflected in works including “Oxymoron”, “Strata” and “Noesis”, has led to a body of work quite distinct from Tüür’s earlier, discursive ‘metalinguistic’ music in which diverse idioms – from serialism to minimalism – were contrasted, interwoven, reconciled. Tüür’s 21st century music foregoes “unnecessary eclecticism”, and manifests instead an organic coherence. These are pieces of determined, individual temperament. As Paul Griffiths observes in the liner notes, Erkki Sven Tüür’s 7th Symphony, written in 2009 and dedicated to the Dalai Lama “and his lifelong endeavours”, is a unique choral symphony, “a work where the orchestra has its own purposes, among which that of framing and supporting the voices is by no means paramount.” The texts that the NDR Choir sings include words of the Buddha from the Dhammapada as well as utterances of more contemporary visionaries and sages, from Gandhi to Mother Theresa. Once a text is used, says Tüür, if only minimally, “it starts to create meanings for an otherwise abstract musical material.” The physical power of the symphony then appears to be influenced and mediated by words addressing the power of compassion.

In the Piano Concerto, Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola gives an exceptional performance, responding to the surging waves of the orchestra and the inspired direction of Paavo Järvi. The concerto is a work of explosive energies, orchestra and piano moving on inter-related and intersecting planes, “continuous and continually in the process of meeting.”

Patricia Petibon / Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris / Paavo Järvi POULENC Stabat Mater - Gloria - Litanies à la Vierge noire

“I have the faith of a country priest,” Francis Poulenc confessed a few days before his sudden death in January 1963. The “bad boy” of French music was also – from the time of the Litanies à la Vierge noire to the late Sept Répons des ténèbres – a masterly exponent of 20th-century sacred music. Poulenc drifted away from religion for a period of some 15 years, only to return to the fold in the wake of the death of the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, who was killed in a car crash on 17 August 1936. “The appalling way in which this musician, who was so full of vitality, was wrenched away from us left me utterly stupefied,” Poulenc later explained. “Thinking of how little our human husk weighs, I felt once again drawn to the spiritual life.” Five days after the tragic event, Poulenc visited the sanctuary at Rocamadour, “a place of extraordinary peace” that sheltered the statue of a black Madonna. Deeply impressed, he began work on his Litanies à la Vierge noire that same evening, completing the score within a week. In the opening, marked “calm”, the female chorus alternates with the instrumental part – an organ in the original version of the work. The lines are simple, almost archaic, the conjunct motifs repeated obsessively and studded with harsh dissonances. The score bears the words “humble and fervent”, admirably summing up the composer’s conception of religion throughout his entire life. “It is very special, humble and, I think, gripping,” Poulenc wrote to Nadia Boulanger, who conducted the first performance of the piece for the BBC in London on 17 November 1936. With this “miracle work”, as pure as it is poignant, Poulenc in a moment of great psychological distress expressed his dismay in the face of death and begged the Virgin to grant him the strength to believe in God once again – after all, Mary herself never gave up hope even when her son died on the Cross. In September 1947 Poulenc arranged the organ part for strings and timpani, producing the lesser-known version heard here. It was the death of another artist that inspired Poulenc to write his powerful Stabat Mater for soprano solo, mixed choir and orchestra. In this case the death was that of Christian Bérard, who died in February 1949 at the age of 46. A painter and stage designer, Bérard had worked for Marcel Achard, George Balanchine, Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux, Louis Jouvet and others. Soon after his death, Poulenc wrote: “When Bébé died I was in London, thus missing those horrible days with the funeral arrangements. I can think of him as if he was off on a trip round the world. [...] Dear Bébé, I think of you as a sweet, invisible presence and not, thank God, as a ghost.” In writing a Stabat Mater, Poulenc hoped to commit his friend’s soul to Notre-Dame de Rocamadour. Once again, he felt that in invoking the sufferings of the Virgin at the time of her son’s crucifixion, he might be able to offer the best possible homage – even more so than with a requiem, which would have been too “bombastic” and would have “had the air of a funeral service”. (Excerpts from the booklet text accompanying the album)