An intriguing title comes from Alpha Classics and a conductor who made a strong impression on me when I encountered her a couple years ago, on an album of Harp Concertos, with Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Sadly, she is much less impressive here in front of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine – a French orchestra based in Bordeaux, which can boast some notable music directors over the decades, including Alain Lombard, John Neschling, Hans Graf, Paul Daniel and, currently, Joseph Swensen.
This concert begins with a work by a composer completely unfamiliar to me – Charlotte Sohy. I initially assumed she was a contemporary composer and this was a brand new work. But upon hearing the very first measures, I realized I was quite wrong about that and checked out the booklet. Sohy was actually born in 1887 and began writing her Symphony in C# Minor in 1914, at the outbreak of WWI. It wasn’t completed until 3 years later in 1917. Sohy was an organist, but was taught composition by none other than Mel Bonis and eventually Roussel. This is a “war symphony” written by an organist, and as such, sounds that way, with its serious nature and somewhat thick, dense orchestration which must have been a familiar (and comfortable) sound for an organist to recreate. In fact, the music is strongly influenced by Franck’s Symphony in D minor, which can be heard (and felt) frequently throughout the piece.
After a long, brooding, sometimes melodramatic opening Lent (which itself lasts a very long 11 minutes), the Vif second movement is lighter and ever so welcome; but doesn’t last even 2 minutes before a slow Lent, embedded within it, slogs it right back down. Damn! It had started off so good but she just couldn’t sustain it. The finale is arguably the best of all – though even here, an initial Vif soon gives way to yet another plus lent. However, it is more atmospheric and colorfully orchestrated than before, and doesn’t shut it down entirely. (The composition lessons were evidently paying off by this time.) Taken as a whole, the Symphony goes on for nearly 30 minutes, which is awfully long for its serious subject matter, and I wish it had more variety of mood and transparency in orchestration. And I can’t help thinking the entire work would have benefitted from a slightly lighter approach than Avni affords it. It’s as if she’s trying to make it grander and more serious than it is, or needs to be – though during a second listen, it became less oppressive and I began to appreciate it more – kind of like when you can listen to Franck’s Symphony only when you’re really in the mood for it.
A little later, CPE Bach’s Symphony #1 seems an odd choice for this program, and Avni plays it with a rather odd amalgamation of styles – with the strings at times without vibrato, other times rich with it, alongside woodwinds glowing with Romanticism. This treatment is somewhat conflicting, even a bit jarring, for no apparent, musically beneficial reason. It’s lively and nicely contrasted to everything around it, and I did actually rather enjoy it – taken on its own.
The concert closes with a seriously heavy-handed account of Stravinsky’s spiky Symphony in 3 Movements, with the spikiness all but buried deep in the thick of it. The orchestra comes thundering in like a sledgehammer immediately after the delightful Bach, sounding like it has doubled in size and moved startlingly close to the listener. This is bad programming for sure, and even worse engineering. (The piano is surprisingly well delineated though, likely highlighted by its own microphone right there close.*) Heavy going much of the way, the piece is nearly finished off for good with a too-slow con moto start to the finale. But eventually, Avni does get a little spiky with it as the piu presto gets underway, and it begins to sound more like Stravinsky. But it comes too late in the piece to salvage it.
I found it amusing reading Avni’s own program note in the booklet where she describes this Symphony as “jazzy, groovy, and rhythmically charged” – the very characteristics she fails to convey in it. And one wonders why? Why was she so determined to make this heavy – even more so than the Sohy? Is she purposely trying to avoid a gentler, yes I’ll say it, more feminine side to her temperament on the podium? She was so endearingly elegant and musically sensitive in the previous album of harp music, why has she all but abandoned that here, replaced with unnecessary brawn?
But wait, that side of her does emerge in the middle of the program, where she plays a real gem, and the obvious highlight of the entire disc – Milhaud’s Chamber Symphony #1. It is positively delightful and delightfully played here, but unfortunately lasts a mere 4 minutes. So out of a total CD playing time of 65 minutes, only 4 of it is truly outstanding. (One could also include the 10 minutes of CPE Bach as well.)
This concert begins with a work by a composer completely unfamiliar to me – Charlotte Sohy. I initially assumed she was a contemporary composer and this was a brand new work. But upon hearing the very first measures, I realized I was quite wrong about that and checked out the booklet. Sohy was actually born in 1887 and began writing her Symphony in C# Minor in 1914, at the outbreak of WWI. It wasn’t completed until 3 years later in 1917. Sohy was an organist, but was taught composition by none other than Mel Bonis and eventually Roussel. This is a “war symphony” written by an organist, and as such, sounds that way, with its serious nature and somewhat thick, dense orchestration which must have been a familiar (and comfortable) sound for an organist to recreate. In fact, the music is strongly influenced by Franck’s Symphony in D minor, which can be heard (and felt) frequently throughout the piece.
After a long, brooding, sometimes melodramatic opening Lent (which itself lasts a very long 11 minutes), the Vif second movement is lighter and ever so welcome; but doesn’t last even 2 minutes before a slow Lent, embedded within it, slogs it right back down. Damn! It had started off so good but she just couldn’t sustain it. The finale is arguably the best of all – though even here, an initial Vif soon gives way to yet another plus lent. However, it is more atmospheric and colorfully orchestrated than before, and doesn’t shut it down entirely. (The composition lessons were evidently paying off by this time.) Taken as a whole, the Symphony goes on for nearly 30 minutes, which is awfully long for its serious subject matter, and I wish it had more variety of mood and transparency in orchestration. And I can’t help thinking the entire work would have benefitted from a slightly lighter approach than Avni affords it. It’s as if she’s trying to make it grander and more serious than it is, or needs to be – though during a second listen, it became less oppressive and I began to appreciate it more – kind of like when you can listen to Franck’s Symphony only when you’re really in the mood for it.
A little later, CPE Bach’s Symphony #1 seems an odd choice for this program, and Avni plays it with a rather odd amalgamation of styles – with the strings at times without vibrato, other times rich with it, alongside woodwinds glowing with Romanticism. This treatment is somewhat conflicting, even a bit jarring, for no apparent, musically beneficial reason. It’s lively and nicely contrasted to everything around it, and I did actually rather enjoy it – taken on its own.
The concert closes with a seriously heavy-handed account of Stravinsky’s spiky Symphony in 3 Movements, with the spikiness all but buried deep in the thick of it. The orchestra comes thundering in like a sledgehammer immediately after the delightful Bach, sounding like it has doubled in size and moved startlingly close to the listener. This is bad programming for sure, and even worse engineering. (The piano is surprisingly well delineated though, likely highlighted by its own microphone right there close.*) Heavy going much of the way, the piece is nearly finished off for good with a too-slow con moto start to the finale. But eventually, Avni does get a little spiky with it as the piu presto gets underway, and it begins to sound more like Stravinsky. But it comes too late in the piece to salvage it.
I found it amusing reading Avni’s own program note in the booklet where she describes this Symphony as “jazzy, groovy, and rhythmically charged” – the very characteristics she fails to convey in it. And one wonders why? Why was she so determined to make this heavy – even more so than the Sohy? Is she purposely trying to avoid a gentler, yes I’ll say it, more feminine side to her temperament on the podium? She was so endearingly elegant and musically sensitive in the previous album of harp music, why has she all but abandoned that here, replaced with unnecessary brawn?
But wait, that side of her does emerge in the middle of the program, where she plays a real gem, and the obvious highlight of the entire disc – Milhaud’s Chamber Symphony #1. It is positively delightful and delightfully played here, but unfortunately lasts a mere 4 minutes. So out of a total CD playing time of 65 minutes, only 4 of it is truly outstanding. (One could also include the 10 minutes of CPE Bach as well.)
The Bordeaux orchestra plays very well throughout, bearing evidence of their distinguished leadership over the years, and they willingly indulge their guest’s every whim for this recording. The CD is reasonably well recorded (other than the alarming forwardness in the Stravinsky), exhibiting the familiar bold, somewhat flat house sound typical of Alpha Classics. In the end, while the album was a clever idea and includes some interesting musical choices, it unfortunately doesn’t fully live up to its promise or potential.
*I later saw a YouTube video of the recording session which shows the piano is actually placed front and center of the orchestra as if in a piano concerto. I guess that’s one way to help out a conductor seemingly unconcerned with creating transparent textures.
