February 12, 2016

  • Symbolist Musical Imagery From Buffalo

     

    Schmitt: Antony & Cleopatra Suites; The Haunted Palice
    Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
    Naxos 8.5753521
    Total Time:  59:43
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) studied with both Massenet and Faure, but his music, still needing to be frequented in the concert hall, tends to feel like the musical voice for the Symbolist movement and Art Noveau.  Perhaps his finest work is the ballet score, The Tragedy of Salome, Op. 50.  Now we have this new disc of lush music featuring works inspired by literature.

    Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra received a performance at the Paris Opera in 1920.  It was for this production that Schmitt was commissioned to provide music for the production which featured updated texts provided by Andre Gide.  The music was to serve as ballet scenes between acts and the great Ida Rubinstein (who would inspire Ravel’s Bolero) would take on the role of Cleopatra.  Afterwards, he extracted two suites of three movements each for concert use.  The first of these begins with the very impressionistic love music for ‘Antony and Cleopatra”.  The latter is depicted with an oboe outlining a faux-eastern modal line.  The music here is somewhat an extension of Delilah’s music from the more familiar Saint-Saens opera and “Bachanale” surrounded by Ravel-like crescendos and even a bit of Richard Strauss (a la Salome).  Next we are “At Pompey’s Camp”, heralded by brass and setting the stage for the final “Battle of Actium.” The second suite begins with the evocative nocturnal sensuality of “Night in the Palace of the Queen”.  This reaches its peak in “Orgy and Dances” which will have some listeners thinking of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre blended with Ravel’s La Valse; sometimes there is even a little jazzier inflection that one might find in his American contemporary John Alden Carpenter.  Bird calls and chant are rather fascinatingly suggested in the final “The Tomb of Cleopatra.”  The music does suffer a bit by not having the sort of climactic final bars needed to insure immediate audience approval, but the style feels more like it could belong in a film and that helps open the door to great appreciation.

    Those unfamiliar with French literary developments at the end of the 19th Century may find it hard to believe how influential the work of Edgar Allan Poe was for what would become the Symbolist movement, especially for the likes of Baudelaire and Mallarme.  Schmitt’s The Haunted Palace is a symphonic study which follows Mallarme’s translation.  The writer’s own meanings into the language are then translated into Schmitt’s musical depiction.  Again, it is like a film suite in the way musical ideas are meant to support, or depict Poe’s story here in music.  The work is often quite stunning.

    For those who appreciate early 20th-Century French music and have yet to discover Florent Schmitt’s music, you are in for a gorgeous treat here that may find you looking for more of this composer’s expressive musical output.   The Buffalo orchestra acquits themselves well with this music.  The recording is a bit immediate and forward which may lessen some of the sensual feel this music acquires in more diffuse halls.  However, that ends up allowing more detail to shine through all the more here.  Falletta continues to add to her vast and often fascinating discography showcasing the great orchestras fortunate to have her on the podium.  Even if there were competition in this repertoire, and there is essentially none, this would still be a recording upon which we may compare future ones.  There is a reason why these performances recorded last March, 2015, have managed to find their way to release so soon.