Ibert reviews
Flute Concertos: Arnold • Ibert • Nielsen
Clara Andrada (flute); Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Jaime Martín (Ondine)
Escales
Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos)
20th Century French Flute Concertos
Ransom Wilson; BBC Concert Orchestra/Perry So (Nimbus Alliance)
Ibert • Ravel
Les Vents Français is a starry pan-European group of leading orchestral players and soloists, comprising flautist Emmanuel Pahud, oboist François Leleux, clarinettist Paul Meyer, horn player Radovan Vlatkovi´c and bassoonist Gilbert Audin. Individually, they play with attractive timbre and immaculate intonation and articulation. Collectively, they blend their colours with great finesse, within dynamics ranging from cushioned pianissimo to bright fortissimo, the latter enhanced by an upfront recording.
London Chamber Orchestra plays Ravel, Fauré, Poulenc & Ibert
Spry, clipped music-making, and a lovely French programme, capped by Rogé’s ebullient account of Poulenc’s mercurial, flamboyant Piano Concerto. Ibert’s Divertissement is also sharply energetic, especially in its riotous finale. Terry Blain
Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Ibert, Poulenc
Listening to Brahms’s Piano Quintet in its earlier incarnation as a Sonata for Two Pianos can sometimes be a disconcerting experience.
Ibert, Dargomizhsky
The great singers of the early 20th century barely overlapped with cinematic sound, so all we have of Caruso’s Pagliacci, Geraldine Farrar’s Carmen, Mary Garden’s Thaïs and others are frustratingly silent films. Chaliapin, though, preserved echoes of the great role Massenet wrote for him, Don Quichotte, in this simple but striking 1933 film by the great Expressionist director G.W. Pabst, although the score and songs are by Ibert – plus a brief snatch of Dargomïzhsky’s Sierra Nevada.
Ravel, Ibert, Poulenc & Martin
José Van Dam’s
textured baritone
is the perfect
instrument to do
justice to four varied
works from the 1930s and ’40s.
Dvor‡k, Ibert
The history on record of some 75 years show that views of Dvorák’s Second Cello Concerto have shifted considerably. Emmanuel Feuerman’s performance, recorded in the late 1920s, still one of the most breathtakingly virtuosic readings of the solo part, took a relatively brisk view of the work, the timing being a little over 33 minutes (Pearl). In the middle of the century perspectives shifted markedly and performances these days regularly come in at anything up to ten minutes longer. This 1969 recording by Jacqueline du Pré, lasting over 42 minutes, is symptomatic of the change.
Ibert, Francaix, Auric, Honegger, Milhaud
Perhaps it's something about the bright, outdoor colours of wind instruments playing together that has always appealed to the French. If only the playing on this recording were as colourful as the Braque painting reproduced on the cover of the insert booklet.
Khachaturian & Ibert: Flute Concertos (Emmanuel Pahud, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich)
This Khachaturian recording poses a dilemma. Should you remain with Jean-Pierre Rampal, the man who transcribed the Violin Concerto for flute and one whose 1970 recording (Erato) exudes the spirit of the composer’s every nuance? Or should you shift to flautist of the moment, Emmanuel Pahud?
Ibert: Persée et Andromède; The Ballad of Reading Gaol; Sarabande pour Dulcinée
Poor Jacques Ibert, condemned to the reputation of an elegantly Gallic joker on the strength of his hilarious Divertissement! This disc ideally demonstrates that he had a much wider range, by presenting two works that are as different from each other as both are from the Divertissement, although they were written in close conjunction. Persée et Andromède is a miniature two-act opera which balances on a knife-edge between comic and serious, between operetta and Baroque opéra-ballet.
Ibert: Persée et Andromède; The Ballad of Reading Gaol; Sarabande pour Dulcinée
Poor Jacques Ibert, condemned to the reputation of an elegantly Gallic joker on the strength of his hilarious Divertissement! This disc ideally demonstrates that he had a much wider range, by presenting two works that are as different from each other as both are from the Divertissement, although they were written in close conjunction. Persée et Andromède is a miniature two-act opera which balances on a knife-edge between comic and serious, between operetta and Baroque opéra-ballet.
Hindemith, Krenek, Dallapiccola, Ligeti, Henze, Ibert, Lutoslawski, Reimann & Kirchner
For all its dotted rhythms and defiant wrong-note tunes, the style of early Hindemith exudes a zestful energy that places it beyond the realms of imitation. In the solo Sonata Op. 25/3, placed first in cellist Wolfgang Boettcher’s recital of 20th-century solo pieces, a powerful opening throws down a gauntlet whose challenge is met in the vibrant invention of all five movements. Though little known, this unaccompanied piece, like its companion for viola in the opus, rekindles a venerable tradition firmly rooted in Bach. Two other works on the programme, Reimann’s Solo and Krenek’s Suite Op.
Ravel, Ibert, Debussy, Jolivet & Franaix
Ravel's Introduction and Allegro and Debussy's late Sonata for flute, viola and harp are slightly awkward, but inevitable companions. Time and again they appear together at concerts or on recordings, but, beyond the quirks of instrumentation which repeatedly place them in close proximity, the two pieces profess to have little in common. Nevertheless, having been surrounded too often by inferior company, they seem to have developed a certain fondness for each other.
Ibert, Pierné, Milhaud, Fauré, Damase, Franaix, Poulenc & Debussy
A slightly disappointing disc of occasional works. Masterpieces can disguise pedestrian performances, but a programme of minor works requires far more inspired playing than that offered by the Reykjavik Wind Quintet to be anything more than a brief distraction. This is a pity as some real gems, such as Ibert’s Trois pièces brèves, are let down by the narrow dynamic range and sometimes cavalier approach to phrasing. At best, a disc to dip into... very occasionally.
Christopher Dingle
Ibert: Chamber Music for Flute
‘British Flute Music’. Hmm... And post-Second World War repertoire. You could be tempted to move on swiftly. Don’t! It’s high time these six beguiling works by George Benjamin, William Alwyn, York Bowen, Elizabeth Maconchy and Roberto Gerhard are recognised on an equal footing with the popular French pieces which so often monopolise CDs and concert programmes of 20th-century flute repertoire.
Hanson, Rangstršm, Ibert, Khachaturian, Prokofiev, Druckman, Revueltas, Nielsen, Ginastera, Leifs, etc
‘Earquake’, which arrives complete with spongy yellow earplugs, is a neat idea: to rattle the listener’s bones with an unpredictable collection of music. There are, however, two flaws: the idea of ‘loud’ music is meaningless in the CD age: should we prefer it, we can have our Hildegard as noisy as our Night on the Bare Mountain. The other problem is that in a search for unusual ‘loud’ repertoire the enterprising Ondine has in fact come up with numerous variations on the bacchanalic dance.