Chausson: Soir de fête, Op. 32 - CD

“A full-blooded approach lends impetus to Chausson’s Soir de fête, and Saint-Saëns’s Second Symphony achieves cohesion through Marek Janowski’s conducting and the orchestra’s playing.” The Telegraph, 27th October 2011

“Janowski and his rejuvenated orchestra ensure that elegant phrasing, transparent textures and a balletic rhythmic awareness generate colour and atmosphere without overload. No profound hidden agendas, just a vital, smiling realization of unpretentious music beautifully crafted for enjoyment by audience and performers alike.” International Record Review, January 2012

“The luminous orchestral palettre of d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard francais is beautifully defined here, with Martin Helmchen a scintillating partner in the piano solo, and Chausson's Soir de fete is given with due rapture and instrumental glow. This is an imaginative programme, performed with panache.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2011

“There are at least two misconceptions to put right about Franck's arguably most gifted pupil.
The first, which this disc dispels admirably, is that the majority of Chausson's music, in the manner of his Poème, is endlessly melancholic or elegiac. The second, which the disc doesn't dispel quite so well, is that in his orchestral writing never managed to free itself from Wagner's embrace. Never entirely perhaps, but by the time the 43-year-old composer came to write his last orchestral piece, the nocturnal Soir de fête included here, his escape from Wagner was well under way, and who knows where it might have led, had it not been for his tragically early death the following year? The outer sections of Soir defête have something about them of 'the vibrating, dancing rhythms of the atmosphere' of Debussy's later Fêtes. The programme as a whole, the overall richness of the orchestral process – whether Wagnerian, Franckian, Straussian or Chaussonian – is well served by the full-bodied sound of Tortelier's BBC Philharmonic.
The Symphony, like Franck's, is cyclical, but not otherwise as indebted to the older composer as is often suggested.
There are none of Franck's organ-loft sonorities anywhere in this wonderfully variegated, open-air orchestration. This is the finest modern recording of the Symphony now available. Each movement is superbly built, and Chandos's recording is truly impressive although in the excerpts from Chausson's incidental music for The Tempest, the sound is perhaps a little bulky.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“while vintage versions retain a unique magic, this modern performance more than holds its own. Moreoever, it comes with some excellent rare orchestral works.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition