The Sourcerer's Apprentice: French Symphonic Poems

Album review

Even though the symphonic poem was invented by a Hungarian (Franz Liszt), and its greatest exponent was a German (Richard Strauss), some of the most celebrated works in this colorful genre were French, though their composers did not write quite as many as either Liszt or Strauss, nor establish their reputations primarily on them. This 2006 reissue from EMI brings together six of the best-known orchestral tone poems by Paul Dukas, César Franck, Henri Duparc, Camille Saint-Saëns, and adopted Frenchman Silvio Lazzari, in serviceable performances by Michel Plasson and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, a capable regional ensemble whose specialty is the Gallic repertoire. However, a word of warning is necessary for anyone who considers buying this album: this would be a decent collection if there weren't inconsistencies in the reproduction, and even worse, problems over where the selections begin and end. The volume unexpectedly goes up and down in several spots, and the sound varies from unnecessarily muted to unnaturally loud, probably from poor mixing. More seriously, the tracks are inaccurately marked: instead of starting at track 2, Le Chasseur maudit actually begins at 9:13 on track 1 and continues until 12:37 of track 2, consequently throwing the timings off for all the performances that follow it. This makes one listen attentively to the disc from beginning to end, or skim ahead carefully using the fast-forward button to locate the desired work. All this twiddling with the volume and fussing over the timings makes this CD labor intensive and considerably less than desirable, even though the interpretations are idiomatic, the playing is attractive, and the program is interesting.

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