Strauss: Concertante Works
Julie Price, bassoon; Tasmin Little, violin. Michael McHale, piano.
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Michael Collins, clarinet
Chandos 20034
Total Time:  76:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

For fans of Richard Strauss’ music, this new Chandos release will fill in a host of gaps of marginalia in the composer’s vast output.  The album pulls together four fairly rare works that will be unfamiliar to most listeners, apart from the Burleske for piano and orchestra which opens the album.  The other real draw here will be one of these last performances by violinist Tasmin Little of the violin concerto as the virtuoso plans to retire from performing.  All but one of these pieces comes from early in Strauss’ output.

Strauss’ Burleske (1885-86) is in the grand Romantic tradition and is like a mini-concerto of sorts.  Michael McHale tackles this piece well with gestures that sometimes feel more Rachmaninov-like in the opening bars.  The performance is overall quite good making for a strong opening to the album that can hold its own against others in the catalog.

The other three pieces though are going to be the more intriguing for Strauss fans.  The quite intimate Duett-Concertino, TRV 293 (1947) is a charming piece.  The clarinet and bassoon take on character-like dialogue with rather beautiful writing for both.  While there is no program, Strauss had a mild suggestion of a fairy (the clarinet) and a bear (the bassoon) that might have only been the germ of what would evolve into this little work.  Written toward the end of his life, the piece has a very conservative tonal palette.  The gestures are still quite like his other mature works, but they have been tamped down in a piece that spins along.  To see just how “old-fashioned” the piece is one need listen no further than the beautiful clarinet Romanze, TRV 80 (1879) which has a rather Mozartean quality.  It is from his earliest days of composition when he was still not quite writing music enraptured by Wagnerian harmony.

The more substantial Violin Concerto in d, TRV 110 (1881-82) was composed for his violin teacher, Benno Walter.  Walter would perform this in a piano reduction form to some appreciation and then in 1890 again in its orchestral version.  This too is a fairly convention work in the tradition of Brahms.  A traditional opening movement features some beautifully lyrical writing and a little rhythmic interest along the way.  The orchestral writing stays fairly traditional but is already quite competent.  There is a brief slow movement and a rondo finale.  For those who know the Strauss of the tone poems and grandiose symphonic chromaticism, this will seem almost anachronistic.  Fortunately, it has Tasmin Little to advocate for the piece giving it as fine a performance as one would hope.

This collection of conservative Romanticism from a composer known more for his expansive chromaticism and orchestral color will be a place to hear some of the ways this later style evolved.  For those who dislike that distinct Strauss style, this will be some pleasant and engaging Late-Romantic music that is firmly in line with other music of the 1870s and 1880s.

The performances here are all quite excellent.  Michael Collins finds gorgeous tone for the clarinet pieces where he is the soloist.  He also is on the podium to provide a larger continuity to the approach in all these works.  The BBC orchestra is in top form as well and captured in an excellent sonic picture with the violin being imaged a bit forward.

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-19^th 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.