Morel Conducts Albéniz and Ravel

Today we have another one of the few orchestral recordings led by the French-American conductor Jean Morel, this the result of a request by long-time blog follower centuri.

As with the recent post of excerpts from Swan Lake, Decca UK produced this double-LP for RCA Victor. Decca made quite a number of recordings with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra during the period, including these September 1959 sessions with Morel.

Jean Morel

The LP set is notable in that it was the first complete recording of Isaac Albéniz's Iberia in its orchestrated form. The composer wrote the 12 pieces for piano in the years before his death in 1909. He asked his colleague Enrique Fernández Arbós to undertake the orchestration, but Arbós only scored five of the 12 sections. It wasn't until the 1950s that the Spanish-American conductor-composer Carlos Surinach provided orchestrations for the other pieces.

In its piano guise, Iberia is famed for its difficulty. Its kaleidoscopic, pictorial nature is well suited for Morel's orchestral control and mastery of balance. There is little passion in his approach, however, and the Paris orchestra was not a virtuoso ensemble. I have nothing but praise for the performance of Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole that completes the set.

The Decca recording is typical of its output, with elevated high and low frequencies. It's impressive, but can make the strings sound harsh.

The download includes scans of the gatefold sleeve, along with reviews from High Fidelity and HiFi-Stereo Review and the ad below. RCA had several interesting releases that month, including a Delibes record conducted by Hugo Rignold that will appear here at some point. The feature attraction, though, was symphonic chunks extracted from Fritz Reiner's records.

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