VINCENT D’INDY: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 = Symphony No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 57; Tableaux de voyage, Op. 36; Karadec, Op. 34 – Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Rumon Gamba – Chandos CHAN 10514, 72:52 [Distr. by Naxos] ****:
Almost forgotten except for the “singular success” of his 1886 Symphony on a French Mountain Air, Op. 25, Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931) remained an active composer, musicologist, educator, and conductor, despite the paucity of performances of his remaining oeuvre. Dimitri Mitropoulos, for instance, programmed the Wallenstein Trilogy for the New York Philharmonic concerts in the 1950s. Pierre Monteux did perform and record the Symphony No. 2 (1903), but it has never enjoyed anything like the popularity of “Mountain Symphony.” Adhering to classical principles and a post-Wagnerian (or Franckian) harmonic syntax, the B-flat Symphony reveals in the course of its four cyclic movements a thorough grounding in sonata-form and counterpoint. Busoni led the symphony in 1906 Berlin and praised it in his aesthetic document, Outline for a New Aesthetic of Music.
D’Indy embodies the irony of theory-and-practice, since, despite his personal objections to Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande and the ‘symbolist’ school of composers, D’Indy, too, falls into whole-tone techniques that often cloud his subject-dominant (B-F), structural design. The harp’s glissandi play a huge role in adding exotic allure to the rather martial aura of the first movement. A lyrical second subject begins to sing, but it trails off diaphanously a bit soon, to my taste. The original motto is built on a tritone (B-flat, D-flat, C, E), so there lies throughout a sense of menace. The music rises at its conclusion to a resolved, firmly confident assertion of ego. Those who know the B-flat Symphony by Chausson–even though D’Indy’s work is dedicated to the memory of Paul Dukas–will find allusions.
The English horn figures in the meandering, D-flat second movement, the atmosphere of an extended song aided by clarinets, horns, and violas. D’Indy uses the Lydian fourth to invoke the folk sensibility. A harp carries a lighter mode, a kind of gigue or bucolic intermezzo that Percy Grainger could have claimed. The tapestry becomes exotic and erotic, the colors having expanded into a Gallic equivalent of Scheherazade. A D Minor intermezzo ensues, the solo viola and the woodwinds laying out the melancholy air. Like Schumann, D’Indy provides two trios–the first another airy gig or reel–each of which exploits a whole-tone scale. The last movement opens like Beethoven’s Ninth, with a slow survey of past motifs. The tritone material of movement one becomes “civilized” in the form of a fugue–shades of later Shostakovich–then the spirited main theme for the rondo emerges in 5/4 time. The mottos from movement one appear, mix, and dark double basses trigger a solo violin (leader Sigrun Eovaldsdottir) of ethereal aspirations. Huge, upward scales take us to a vivid–perhaps ’inflated’–chorale in a spirit of triumph.
D’Indy composed a suite of thirteen piano pieces in 1882 based on his excursions in the Black Forest and Tyrol. Rife with thirds and variants on mediant chords, the pieces have sophistication and color. D’Indy orchestrated six of them in 1889. C Minor strings argue with A-flat Minor horns to open the Preambule. En marche struts out in F Major, a happy folk song in syncopations. Le Glas, played lento, is a C Minor episode in grave, rustic tones enhanced by clarinet and viola, open fifths in the cellos. Tympanic rolls accentuate the drama, and we might think of Elgar. Lac Vert in E-flat Major proceeds like a lullaby in thirds, almost Brahms. La Poste stays in G Major, tonic and dominant, the trumpet heralding some buzzing strings in F, the brief whole a bit of Schubert. Reve is the last longest episode: in C Minor, it takes a cyclic cue from Preambule, but darker in hue. The jaunty rondo identifies once more tunes from Le Glas and Lac Vert as well. Rather virtuosic playing from the Icelanders here, recorded 8-11 September 2008.
In 1890, D’Indy composed music for Karadec, a play by Andre Alexandre, of which D’Indy preserved three pieces lasting about 11 minutes. The Prelude’s G Minor March might invoke rustic allusions to both Grieg and Nielsen, the harmony moving to B Minor before it is over. The brief Chanson opens with a flute in E-flat Major which proceeds to horns, violas, and cellos, violin trills from "the beyond,” and some tinkling from the triangle. The march tune, transfigured, from the Prelude opens the Noce bretonne, a vivacious wedding that has the oboe in G Major against chromatic sixteenth notes in the strings. I had not heard Mr. Gamba in the first volume of D’Indy on Chandos, but this disc convinced me he knows what he is doing.
— Gary Lemco
