The Music of Daniel-Lesur

Continuing a series of recordings of French music by the radio orchestras of that country, today we have three works by Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002), one of the members of the La jeune France group.

Sources differ about his full name - was it Jean-Yves Daniel Lesur or Daniel Jean-Yves Lesur? - but he went by the name "Daniel-Lesur" throughout his career.

La jeune France: Olivier Messiaen, Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet and Daniel-Lesur

The composers Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet, Yves Baudrier and Daniel-Lesur founded La jeune France in 1936, to promote less abstract forms of music than were then the fashion. The group has been called neo-impressionistic, but their styles differ from one another. For example, Messiaen, Daniel-Lesur's lifelong friend and the best-known member of the group, was a mystic and developed his own idiosyncratic methods that are much different from his friend's approach.

In his book French Music Today, the musicologist Claude Rostand described Daniel-Lesur as "a sincere musician, fond of clarity, hostile to facile exterior effects, to the excesses of the advance guard as well as to stilted formulae."

Writing in 1973, soon after this LP was released, the critic Royal S. Brown noted, "Daniel-Lesur. although less ambitious than Jolivet and Messiaen, found a highly personal idiom marked by strong, insistent rhythms (frequently derived from dance patterns) and an almost English pastoral quality lacking in the style of the other Jeune France composers."

These characteristics were indeed what you will hear on this record, which encompasses Daniel-Lesur's Symphonie de Danses, Sérénade pour orchestre à cordes and Pastorale.

Edouard Lindenberg

The performers are the Orchestre de Chambre de l'ORTF as led by Edouard Lindenberg (1908-73), a Romanian conductor resident in Paris after 1950. Lindenberg, little known in this country (the US), made quite a few recordings for European labels. He died not long after this LP was issued.

This recording has not be re-released in any form, to my knowledge, although the music has been recorded by other artists. The composer remains relatively neglected - there seems to be only one CD of his music currently available.

Daniel-Lesur

Daniel-Lesur also had a distinguished career as an organist (at Ste. Clotilde and the Benedictine Abbey of Paris), teacher, and arts administrator (head of the Schola Cantorum and the Opéra National de Paris).

This transfer was requested by a reader. My pressing was relatively clean except for one unfixable fault. To cover that, I edited in a short section of a live performance led by Louis de Froment, suitably matched to the Lindenberg recording. The overall sound is very good.

The download includes Royal Brown's lengthy survey of 20th century French music - dated, certainly, but still useful.

LINK