July 29, 2019

  • Rare Orchestral Music by D'Indy

     

    D’Indy: Medee, Karadee Suite, Saugefleurie
    Malmo Symphony Orchestra/Darrell Ang
    Naxos 8.573858
    Total Time:  53:15
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Chandos has been serving the music of Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931) for several years now with Rumon Gamba.  For this Naxos release, conductor Darrell Ang has chosen three relatively forgotten orchestral pieces by this transitional French composer.  Ang has been surveying some of the periphery of French repertoire for the label so far, often drawing fine performances and was mentored by Lorin Maazel and Esa-Pekka Salonen.  Here he leads the Malmo Symphony in this unusual repertoire.

    D’Indy is mostly remembered for a single work, the Symphony on a French Mountain Air, Op. 25 (1886).  His music was quite influenced by Wagner (he was present when the Ring was first performed at Bayreuth).  Franck was his teacher thus essentially cementing this musical connection to Wagnerian harmony and thicker orchestral writing.  And yet, D’Indy, composing at that fertile Belle Epoque where so many different musical aesthetics were in the air, managed to carve out a style that finds itself hard to pin down between the two centuries, essentially expanding the grand romantic French tradition.  As a teacher at the Schola Cantorum, his influence would be more widely felt through an eclectic group of composers that included Roussel, Satie, and even Cole Porter!

    One trend often overlooked in this period is the way composers were exploring ancient musics, especially the church music traditions of the Renaissance and Middle Ages.  The impact is often lost on listeners because when actual Gregorian Chants or modes are not discernible, the composers may explore meters that are closer to earlier music.  (Saint-Saens does this in his Organ Symphony for example.)  Gregorian Chant is an inspiration and basis for the first two works on this release.  Medee (1898) is the latest piece of the album.  It was composed originally as incidental music to a production of this classic Greek tragedy updated by the dramatist Catulle Mendes (1841-1909).  Afterwards, D’Indy chose to create a five-movement orchestral suite.  The “Prelude” is an example of motivic transformation where a four-note idea becomes the basis of the music that follows.  The chromatic lines, and rich harmony, take their models from Wagner very well here.  The style also approaches Mahlerian proportions at times in this quite dramatic opening.  “Pantomime” is in a more familiar D’Indy approach in its use of folk tunes as a unifying factor, the second which is a rather delightfully-orchestrated tune closer to British folk tune style.  In “L’Attente de Medee”, D’Indy borrows from the Impressionist orchestral playbook with his solo flute line and glossy string writing.  The final two movements bring us back to late-19th Century Romanticism with Tchaikovsky not far off in the background.

    Two shorter works round off the album.  The three movement suite that D’Indy created from his incidental music for Karadec, Op. 34 (1890) are further examples of his application of folk tunes, in this case from the Breton region.  The final movement is even a “Breton Wedding,” which has an overly-dramatic beginning.  Last on the program is the symphonic poem Saugerfleurie, Op. 21 (1884).  The story is of a woodland fairy who is awakened by a hunt and subsequently is ill-fated to fall in love with the Prince.  Musically, D’Indy takes from his most influential composer, Wagner, both in the shaping of his love music and in references to Wagnerian motifs through how they are orchestrated here.  One might better place this in the line of Liszt symphonic poems and their thematic transformation techniques which is somewhat on display here, though D’Indy creates four distinct melodic ideas.

    The pieces here are quite engaging late-Romantic works and anyone exploring this period of music history will find these to be interesting music outside the normal repertoire of the time.  One can certainly marvel at D’Indy’s orchestral writing in these pieces.  This is also brought out in the Malmo Orchestra’s performances here.  Ang’s shaping of the lyrical lines in this music helps make this more than a straight run-through reading.  That adds an extra dramatic flow to the music that helps it communicate well.  The only other recordings of these pieces are on two different Chandos albums.  They can come as recommended because they include other D’Indy pieces so having them all is certainly an option.  The opulence of the pieces are going to come across regardless and Naxos’ has the slight advantage in its budget bracket as usual.