TCHAIKOVSKY: The Sleeping Beauty Ballet, Op. 66; The Nutcracker: Suite No. 1, Op. 71a; Suite No. 2 (arr. Fistoulari) – Paris Conservatory Orchestra/Anatole Fistoulari
Opus Kura OPK 7041/2 (2 CDs) , 75:55; 76:25 [Distr. by Albany] ***:
A music critic in Atlanta, responding to a reissue of a violin concerto with Nathan Milstein and the orchestra led by Anatole Fistoulari (1907-1995), referred to him as “the world’s most famous non-conductor,” given the Russian-born maestro’s penchant for submerging his innate personality into the musical score. These monophonic, Tchaikovsky inscriptions from 1951-1952 for Decca are examples in point of Fistoulari’s literalist traditions, which excepting minor cuts in the Nutcracker March and the Waltz of the Flowers, demonstrate the linear progression of his line–sans repeats–and the richness of the music, having been allocated to the Paris Conservatory’s nasal woodwinds and strings.
The second suite opens with a splice from the Scene from Act 1 (No. 1) to the Coda of the Pas de Deux (Act 2, No. 14). Nice work from flute, clarinet. and oboe over a thumping, pizzicato string support. The vivid execution, however, does not belie the essentially “bland” or “blank” character of the music, which occasionally lacks the magic or charm that an Ansermet or a Stokowski brings to these familiar notes. The Grandfather Dance with “Nutcracker” effects moves daintily enough, tied as it is to Schumann’s march from Papillons. The high moment, naturally enough, is the Andante maestoso, its descending scale-pattern resonating below a harp cascade. The Waltz of the Snowflakes, with its flute and harp runs, segues into the dream-vision sequence (Scene, Act 2, No. 10), the kingdom over which the Nutcracker-Prince reigns. Chocolate (the Spanish Dance with trumpet) breaks out into a spirited seguidilla, which no sooner ends when the Final Dance leaps forth (Act 2, No. 15).
Happily, The Sleeping Beauty conveys more energy and musical bite, from the outset of the Prologue, whose pageantry and delicate scoring obviously appeal to Fistoulari, who was with the Ballets Russes in Paris, 1937-1940. Harp and trumpets, strings and triangle, oboe and clarinet collaborate well to create the tapestry of enchantment and mystical eroticism that make this score a perennial delight. The flute and glockenspiel conspire a dazzling Good Fairy. The pacing consistently remains at dancers’ tempos, functional but vocalized and often exciting. Disc 2 begins with the four suitors’ calling upon Princess Aurora, the figures indebted to tumblers’ music we know from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Smetana. The perennial Garland Waltz moves briskly, the woodwinds lithe. The extensive Grand pas d’action which contains the famed Rose Adagio proves eloquent, a performance of conviction, trumpets, cymbals, and snare drum in full panoply. The end of Act 1 reminds us how much the composer’s own Hamlet–Fantasy Overture owes this richly woven sound, just as the Act 2 Pas traction “borrows” liberally from the slow movement of the E Minor Symphony. And the Panorama--regardless of who performs it–has struck me as the most glorious moment in Tchaikovsky, ever since my first recording of it, by Kostelanetz on an CBS CL-series LP.
Act 3 has its own set of delicious moments, not the least of which is the magnificent Polonaise, my favorite rendition belonging to Svetlanov. The ensuing Grand divertissement allows Tchaikovsky his unequalled gift for musical characterization, like Puss ‘n’ Boots, the Blue Bird, Little Red Riding Hood, and the elegant waltz that forms the Pas de quatre. The Paris Conservatory players are equal to the demands of the score, its colors, its sensitive interplay of timbres–and no small credit to our conductor Fistoulari–herein the first to inscribe the lion’s share of The Sleeping Beauty for the modern sound recording.
–Gary Lemco
