Ansermet Conducts Honegger's 'Christmas Cantata'

It's surprising that I have maintained this blog for 17 years and never featured the Christmas Cantata (Une cantate de Noël) by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955). It's a beautiful, ingenious, even profound work that was the composer's last.

Today we have a fine 1961 recording led by the eminent Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), who has not appeared on the blog before.

The cantata is backed by Honegger's Symphony No. 2, an apt companion because both works depict a journey from the darkness into the light.

FYI: also below are links to another performance of the Honegger Symphony, coupled with Menotti's Violin Concerto, and to the latter composer's Amahl and the Night Visitors, in the famed first recording.

Arthur Honegger

Honegger's Christmas Cantata

Honegger's cantata was actually sketched in some detail more than a decade before it appeared. He had meant it to be part of a Passion Play that he was writing for the Swiss town of Selzach, to a libretto by Cäsar von Arx. However, the war, the composer's own illnesses and the librettist's 1949 death meant the full passion was never completed.

Among the fully sketched parts was the birth of Christ. When Paul Sacher commissioned a work from Honegger for the 25th anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the composer decided to edit and orchestrate those sketches into the work we know as the Christmas Cantata. The premiere was in 1954.

In his book on Honegger's music, Harry Halbreich has written: "The composition of Une Cantate de Noël provided his last moments of creative happiness and, although the work was based on much older material, it carries nonetheless a symbolic significance in bringing his life to an end on a note of hope - that hope 'which is the strongest.'"

The work starts in darkness with somber organ tones that gradually lead to choral passages taken both from the liturgy and from carols both in French and German. The latter perhaps signify both multilingual Switzerland and peace among nations following the war.

Honegger makes remarkable use of "Stille Nacht." As the critic Alfred Frankenstein noted in High Fidelity: "[U]ntil you have heard 'Stille Nacht' manipulated by a Honegger, you haven't heard it at all."

Ernest Ansermet

The work is scored for baritone (here, Pierre Mollet), organ (Pierre Segond), choirs (Choirs of Pro Arte, French Swiss Radio and Television and the College of Villamont, directed by André Charlet) and L'Orchestra de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ansermet.

The recording comes from the Victoria Hall in Geneva, famed as a recording location. Even so, the cantata is murkier than ideal, probably because of the organ. I've tried to clarify the sound.

Symphony No. 2

As mentioned, Honegger's Symphony No. 2 is another journey from darkness into light, remarkable in its optimism considering it was written during the Second World War. The symphony is famed for its peroration, with a trumpet breaking through the turbulence and strikingly changing the mood of the work.

As with the Christmas Cantata, the symphony was commissioned by Paul Sacher for an anniversary of his Basel Chamber Orchestra - its tenth, in 1937. The work was not premiered, however, until 1942, and that came with Sacher conducting the Collegium Musicum of Zurich, another organization he founded.

Sacher (1906-99), who was wealthy, also commissioned works by Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Bohuslav Martinů, Frank Martin, Hans Werner Henze, Richard Strauss, Elliott Carter, Witold Lutosławski, Henri Dutilleux and Harrison Birtwistle, among others.

This is a very good performance in excellent sound.

LINK to Honegger's Christmas Cantata and Symphony No. 2

Another Honegger Performance with Menotti's Violin Concerto

Another strong reading of the Honegger second symphony, by the Boston Symphony and Charles Munch, is available here in newly remastered sound. Munch was a huge supporter of the composer

The coupling is Menotti's neglected but lovely Violin Concerto with soloist Tossy Spivakovsky.

The Honegger is from 1953, the Menotti from a year later.

The Classic Amahl and the Night Visitors

Appropriate to the season, I had a request for Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, which I first uploaded a number of years ago. I've now remastered the files, which have always sounded great; now perhaps a bit better.

This is the brilliant premiere performance under the young Thomas Schippers. It was the first opera written for television, presented on Christmas Eve 1951. More information is here.

20th Century Music for Clarinet and Piano

Stanley Drucker is one of the best known clarinet players of the recent past but he has made relatively few solo recordings. Here is one from 1971 with five excellent works from eminent 20th century composers. The Odyssey LP pairs Drucker with pianist Leonid Hambro, himself a distinguished figure.

Stanley Drucker

Drucker, born in 1929, was the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic for an amazing 49 years, from 1960 until 2009. He was with the orchestra for more than 62 years - his entire working career.

Leonid Hambro

Hambro (1920-2006) made a number of recordings early in his career for such labels as Allegro, but later became known for his comedic bent. He spent a decade as the sidekick of Victor Borge, and appeared on P.D.Q Bach and Gerard Hoffnung programs. He also collaborated with synthesizer player Gershon Kingsley for a record of Switched-On Gershwin. He was a talented accompanist as well.

For this LP, Drucker and Hambro programmed Leonard Bernstein's early and enjoyable Sonata, Sonatinas from Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, Debussy's brief Petite Piece for clarinet and piano, and a typically discursive but lovely sonata by Sir Arnold Bax.

I suspect that this was an independent production that Drucker and Hambro brought to Columbia, which put it out on its budget Odyssey label, mainly devoted to reissues. The sound is vivid but it does compress the dynamic range of the performance.

I transferred the LP is response to a request on a classical sharing site, but I thought some readers here might enjoy it as well.

Circa 1970s ad

Flutist Maurice Sharp with the Clevelanders and Louis Lane

This is another in a series of recordings by spin-offs of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by longtime assistant/associate/resident conductor Louis Lane. Today the spotlight is on the orchestra's principal flute, Maurice Sharp, who performs with a chamber ensemble of principals and others from the band, here called the Cleveland Sinfonietta.

The repertoire encompasses four 20th century works, three by Americans (Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Arthur Foote and Howard Hanson) and one by the French/Swiss composer Arthur Honegger.

Harvey McGuire joins Sharp for Honegger's Concerto da Camera for Flute, English Horn and Strings. Alice Chalifoux is the harpist in Hanson's Serenade.

Sharp joined the orchestra right out of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with William Kincaid, and remained principal flute for 50 years. He joined the ensemble when founding music director Nikolai Sokoloff was still in charge, with his tenure lasting to the brink of the Christoph von Dohnányi era.

Julius Baker (left) and Maurice Sharp, circa 1975

It is instructive to contrast Sharp's approach to another Kincaid pupil who became a famed orchestra principal - Julius Baker, who was solo flute both in Chicago and then for many years in New York (and who earlier spent several years in the Cleveland flute section). A while back I posted a Decca release in which Baker assays two of the works on this Cleveland issue - Griffes's Poem and Foote's A Night Piece. (Baker presents the Foote with string quartet accompaniment; Sharp uses the score for a larger ensemble.)

To my ears, Baker is the warmer of the two, although both are immaculate in their presentation. Sharp's cooler approach is in keeping with the proclivities of the Cleveland forces in the records they made with Lane - and with Szell, for that matter.

The sound on both LPs is very good - Baker in mono, Sharp in stereo. Michael Gray's discography tells us that the Cleveland recordings were taped in Severance Hall in July 1960. The Baker sessions date from June 1952.

LINK to 2026 remastered version

Menotti and Honegger Led by Munch

This post is notable for Gian Carlo Menotti's neglected violin concerto. Not that I am shrugging off Arthur Honegger's second symphony, but this recording has been reissued repeatedly, unlike the Menotti work.

This was the first and for many years the only recording of the concerto, written in 1952 for Efrem Zimbalist. By the time this version was set down in November 1954, the work had also been taken up by Tossy Spivakovsky, who is heard here with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony.

This is a beautiful concerto in a vibrant rendition. It is surprising that both the concerto and the recording are not better known.

Munch recorded the symphony at least three times. Honegger completed the work in 1942, and Munch took the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra into the studio that same year to begin work on a recording, which for some reason was not completed until 1944. This reading is from March 1953.

Honegger scored his symphony for strings with a prominent trumpet part in the final movement.

While the symphony has become a well-known work, the Menotti concerto does not deserve its obscurity. The download includes a doctoral dissertation on the work by Laura Tomlin that gives historical details and a detailed analysis.

The Symphony Hall sound, as usual, is quite good. [Note (November 2025): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

LINK

Honegger from Philadelphia

I have had very little time to prepare posts for several weeks, so I am most grateful to my friend Joe Serraglio for this notable contribution. It is the 1952 recording of Arthur Honegger's dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher from the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy with Vera Zorina in the title role.

The oratorio is on texts by Paul Claudel, much of which is declaimed by Zorina and Raymond Gerome. For that reason, Joe's inclusion of the complete libretto is particularly welcome.

The recording of this 1935 work was made by American Columbia in the Academy of Music in November 1952. Joe's transfer is from the 1953 Philips pressing.

Below we have Ormandy during the recording session with Gerome and Zorina, who incidentally was the wife of Columbia president Goddard Lieberson and made occasional appearances in dramatic roles on record. She also can be heard in works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Hindemith, Milhaud and Walton. Zorina started off as a ballerina, but I first remember her emerging from a reflecting pool during the course of the Ritz Brothers movie vehicle, Goldwyn Follies, which also featured Adolf Menjou, Kenny Baker, Edgar Bergen and a score by the Gershwin brothers. (Or did I dream that?)

Thanks to Joe once again for his generosity!