Symfonische muziek

Composed by Stravinsky in 1933 in the wake of the French oratorio fashion whose figureheads are Milhaud (Les Choéphores) and Honegger (Le Roi David, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher), and his own Oedipus Rex, Perséphone sanctifies the French period of the Russian composer, after he left Switzerland and before he settled definitely in the United States. Ordered by Ida Rubinstein, to whom music history already owed Debussy’s Martyre de Saint-Sébastien and Ravel’s Boléro, this melodrama, profane in its story and hybrid regarding its musical form, glorifies spring -without it being a new “Consecration” in its language) on a text by André Gide, thus prolonging the emotion created by the novel Si le grain ne meurt. The three acts of the work (Perséphone enlevée, Perséphone aux enfers, Perséphone renaissante) are close to human nature and psyche with an empathy reinforced by Stravinsky’s music. Conceived for a tenor (Eumolpe), a narrator, a mixed chorus, a chidren’s chorus and an orchestra, this work, so original in the production of its author, has however never found its audience. People long blamed Stravinsky for wringing the neck of the prosody of Gide’s text without understanding that it was however one of its more sensitive works, possessed with a melodic verve, a clear lyricism and a warmth for which he wasn’t known for. Under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s inspired and aerial baton, Perséphone finds here a second youth which might finally allow it to impose itself to a new generation of music lovers. This “strange profane mass” (as described by Marcel Marnat) is probably one of the most touching works of a composer that is always looking for new springs. © François Hudry/Qobuz

What an excellent idea it was to put the Concertos for Orchestra by two friends as close as Bartók and Kodály together on a single record! The first, written for Koussevitzky and the Boston Orchestra, has been a hit for over 70 years in programmes and concerts the world over; but the second has, quite unjustly, been conspicuous in its absence since its first performance in 1941. The fruit of a commission from the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra in 1939, the Concerto for Orchestra by Kodály was supposed to have been first performed by the writer in person, but the plan was scotched by the war, which prevented Kodály from leaving his country. The score arrived in the US in the luggage of... Bartók, who carefully packed it up when he began his exile. Short, and made up of a single movement, Kodály's work doesn't bear the mark of the political events of the time. It is a work in a rather pastoral mood, in which elements of baroque concerto grosso are mixed in with traditional popular melodies. The very delicate orchestration almost overshadows the massed ranks of the orchestra demanded by the composer, who would shortly leave behind symphonic composition to write his famous Psalmus Hungaricus and oratorios, before one final Symphony put the capstone on his oeuvre. Jakub Hrůša does perfect justice to this seductive score, painting it in diaphanous colours and a most convincing mystery, at the head of the excellent Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. The young Czech conductor doesn't stop at merely putting these two works on the same record, but works to underline the subterranean links that join them together. His approach to the Concerto for Orchestra by Bartók, which came a few years after Kodály's piece is the opposite of the monumental orchestral work that we normally hear. This renewed version expresses a piercing melancholy which even the thundering of the final Presto can't dissipate. © François Hudry/Qobuz