From the Back Room: Saint-Saëns and d'Indy

The chamber music of Camille Saint-Saëns and Vincent d'Indy is hardly well-known; then again, when do we hear any of their music these days? The former's third symphony at times, the latter's Symphony on a French Mountain Air, perhaps.

So today's unusual combination of an octet and a septet, both featuring a trumpet are particularly welcome, especially in these performances by the Guilet String Quartet, trumpeter Harry Glantz, pianist Menahem Pressler, flutist Julius Baker and Claude Monteux and bassist Philip Sklar.

This 1954 recording was one of the readers' choices in my recent Buster's Back Room poll.

Saint-Saëns' composition is his Septet in E flat major, Op. 65, for Piano, Strings and Trumpet, dating from 1879-80. In it, the composer indulges his taste for his 17th century predecessors, melding it with the Romanticism of his own time.

Daniel Guilet and Menahem Pressler with Bernard Greenhouse

The performers are the Guilet Quartet, Pressler, Glantz and Sklar. The members of the quartet are unidentified except for its leader, Daniel Guilet. Generally he chose its members from the NBC Symphony, where he was concertmaster. In 1955, Guilet and Pressler would form the famed Beaux Arts Trio with cellist Bernard Greenhouse, who was not on this date.

This is an enjoyable performance that was a bit let down by the unsubtle sound that M-G-M provided. I have added a small amount of room tone so that it does not sound as though Harry Glantz is soloing five feet away from you.

Harry Glantz

Vincent d'Indy's Suite in Olden Style for Trumpet, Two Flutes and Strings, Op 24, is a similar work. The unsigned cover notes describe it as follows: "D'Indy's Suite in Olden Style undoubtedly was patterned after the Saint-Saëns Septet. Not only is it near in date to that latter work - it was composed in 1886, five years after the Septet was introduced - but it uses the trumpet in much the same fashion and is even formed in the archaic dance suite style of the Saint-Saëns effort.

Claude Monteux, Julius Baker

"Once again, the trumpet is used in both expected and unexpectedly lyric ways and d'Indy sets himself even more of a problem of balance by replacing Saint-Saëns' solo piano with two light-weighted flutes."

Despite the similarities in these compositions, d'Indy and Saint-Saëns were not all that close personally. The former was a pupil of César Franck, and an advocate for German music. When he became an official of the Société nationale de musique, he succeeded in admitting non-French music and musicians, which prompted Saint-Saëns to leave the organization.

Philip Sklar with an unvarnished bass

This is an unusual and enjoyable record, not least because it uses the bass of Philip Sklar to underpin the proceedings. Like Guilet, he was a member of the NBC Symphony. That ensemble was led by Arturo Toscanini, who retired in 1954, at about the time this recording was made.

LINK

Bour Conducts d'Indy

The music of French composer Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931) is not often heard in the concert hall, but various record companies have kept it alive through their releases.

Even so, the current record catalogue displays few contemporary recordings of the composer's most popular work, the Symphonie Sur un Chant Montagnard Français (Symphony on a French Mountain Air). It's amazing that such an extraordinary delightful work should be so neglected. And perhaps d'Indy's best work, Jour d'Été a la Montagne (Summer Day on the Mountain), is even less known.

This Ducretet-Thompson release from 1954 pairs the works in fine performances from two artists who are themselves underrated - conductor Ernest Bour and, in the Symphonie Sur un Chant Montagnard Français, pianist Daniël Wayenberg.

1951 commemorative postcard

Although d'Indy was an important teacher (Roussel, Magnard, Canteloube Milhaud and Honegger were among his students), he also was something of maverick. A disciple of Franck, he was a champion of German music at a time when other French composers, such as Saint-Saëns, were little inclined to look outside of France for inspiration. He also was out of favor with such younger composers as Ravel.

But that's irrelevant to enjoying the music on this disc. The Symphonie Sur un Chant Montagnard Français is pure pleasure, building on memorable folk tunes, and superbly presented here, particularly by the graceful pianist Daniël Wayenberg.

Jour d'Été a la Montagne is "one of the noblest musical scores inspired by nature," or so wrote critic Peter Hugh Reed in a review included in the download.

Ernest Bour

Conductor Bour (1913-2001), born in Alsace-Lorraine, was known as an exponent of contemporary music. He led premieres of works by such composers as Górecki, Ligeti, Rihm, Stockhausen and Xenakis, while serving as music director in Strasbourg and Baden-Baden.

Daniël Wayenberg

The gifted pianist Wayenberg (1929-2019) was of Dutch extraction but lived most of his adult life in Paris. He was first-prize winner at the 1949 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition. Wayenberg also was a composer and maintained an interest in jazz.

Reviewer Reed credits Wayenberg with sharpening the conductor's rhythm, but I can find no fault with the direction. If you are familiar with the French orchestras of the time, these performances will seem typical. The Symphonie is with the Orchestre du Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, which may be a nom du disque for one of the many Parisian orchestras, possibly the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, which gave concerts at the time in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. (The Conservatoire orchestra had recorded the Symphonie in 1953 with its music director, André Cluytens.)

For Jour d'Été a la Montagne Bour conducts the Orchestre Radio-Symphonique, which may have been the Orchestre National de la Radio-Télévision Française, the present-day Orchestre National de France.

The recordings are good for the time. Note that Jour d'Été a la Montagne begins at a very low level, depicting the dawn. For the release, Decca-London provided a cover in children's picture-book style, a contrast with the pastels of the French cover at left.