SAINT-SAENS: Symphony Nos. 1 & 2 ; Sym. No. 3 “Organ”; other works – Vincent Dubois, organ/Orch. d’Ile de France/Yoel Levi – Cascavelle (2 CDs)

by | Jun 24, 2011 | Classical CD Reviews | 0 comments

SAINT-SAENS: Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 2; Symphony No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 55; Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78 “Organ”; Le Rouet d”Omphale, Op. 31; Phaeton, Op. 39; Danse Macabre, Op. 40; Marche heroique – Vincent Dubois, organ/ Orchestre d’Ile de France/Yoel Levi – Cascavelle VEL 3136, (2 CDs) 60:00, 73:22 [Distr. By Albany] ****:
Conductor Yoel Levi–a pupil of maestros Rodan, Kondrashin, and Ferrara–came to my notice in Atlanta, where he served as Music Director from 1988-2000. Despite his prodigious musical memory, Levi at the time left a cool or cold impression–in spite of the official critical reviews–on the works he championed, earning him the dubious epithet “one-trick pony” among the Atlanta musicians.  Levi’s work here, with the Orchestre National d’Ile France–his appointment having been from 2005-2009–achieves a happy combination of warmth and architectural grandeur, especially in the popular Organ Symphony of 1886, a piece that invites a sense of the colossal.
It was Jean Martinon via EMI who first revealed to us the five Saint-Saens symphonies, including a rejected 1853 Symphony in A Minor and the so-called “Urbs Roma” Symphony of 1856. The Symphony in E-flat Major, Op. 2 (1853) certainly ingratiates the listener with its harmonic richness and its capacity for melody. The total delight proves to be the Marche-Scherzo, a countrified tune whose plangent woodwind lines and silken counterpoint weave a beguiling fabric that adumbrates the wonderful pastoral aura in the second movement of the B Minor Violin Concerto. The Symphony No. 2 in A Minor (1859) was conceived in Leipzig, and a German polyphony dominates its sensibility. I first heard it on a New York Philharmonic broadcast with Mitropoulos, a former Saint-Saens protégé. The last movement, Prestissimo, echoes the tarantella of the Bizet C Major Symphony in its youthful vitality and textural buoyancy.
This 2009 recording of the Organ Symphony gives us a powerhouse reading, eminently qualified to rival the famed inscriptions from Martinon, Munch and Karajan. Levi injects any number of feral effects into the inventively complex textures, a resounding fortissimo or sforzati at those precise moments that pushes the sonic envelope wide enough to admit many an audiophile. The glassy surface of the recording, aided and abetted by the facility of the scoring, quite ensures that for 40 minutes the lover of French symphony will feel amply rewarded. The ensuing symphonic poems and military march–composed 1871-1874–again testify to Saint-Saens’ thorough mastery of orchestral discipline in a medium beholden to Liszt, the dedicatee of the Organ Symphony. Certainly time considerations would have permitted the inclusion of the absent tone-poem, La Jeunesse d’Hercule, which also had a brilliant reading from Mitropoulos on CBS ML 5154. Greek mythology seems to have impelled Saint-Saens to imaginative heights, while the ubiquitous Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass infiltrates the Danse Macabre – once more a likely nod to Franz Liszt, whose own Totentanz had won Saint-Saens’ admiration. Each of the symphonic poems receives energized realization from Levi and his French forces, performances idiomatic, light, virtuosic, and crisp. Ann-Estelle Medouze plies Death’s fiddle for the Danse Macabre, amply supported by wicked brass and high winds. If this set serves as a presage for more collaborations on disc between Levi and this ensemble, then the augury bodes for more successful and sympathetic music-making than was wonted in Atlanta.
— Gary Lemco
 

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