Honegger: Movement symphonique No. 1 'Pacific 231'

For her previous CD on the ORFEO label, Baiba Skride recorded two highly Romantic violin works by Brahms and has now turned her attention to two 20th-century violin concertos whose composers struck out in extremely individual directions while drawing on traditional formal models.

In his single contribution to the medium, the worldly Stravinsky drew on his knowledge of the whole history of music and explicitly appealed to the model of Johann Sebastian Bach in composing a work that is rigorously structured and at the same time playful in a neo-Baroque spirit. It would be harder to find a more different approach to the template of the traditional three-movement concerto than that found in the piece by the Swiss composer Frank Martin. In its atmospheric density it recalls Martin’s setting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, dominated, as it were, by the mysterious, fairytale-like but also capricious and lively spirit of Ariel. Baiba Skride finds the right tone not only for the veiled sonorities of this piece but also for the tremendous sense of brightness that overwhelms the writing towards the end. Her enormous stylistic flexibility also comes to the fore in the Stravinsky Concerto, to which she brings a sense of crystalline radiance. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its principal conductor Thierry Fischer are not only ideal partners, they also complement the programme with three almost contemporary orchestral works, all of which are classic examples of the way in which composers’ understanding of form – in this case, programme music – changed in the 20th century. In Honegger’s Pacific 231 and Rugby, the orchestra impresses us with its ability to conjure up the sounds of a speeding train and of rugby players running to and fro. The orchestra completes the programme on a note of grotesque jollity with Stravinsky’s Circus Polka, the quotation-like character of which – in this case, Schubert – may also be said to hold together the programme as a whole, with its two violin works in central position, invariably maintaining the greatest originality in this act of musical re-creation.

Full of contrast, Honegger's music takes in the froth of Paris in the 1920s, the excitement of steam locomotion and sport, as well as seriousness and depth of feeling in the Second and Third Symphonies, written during and after the Second World War.

Jean Fournet and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the Netherlands give idiomatic performances of two cornerstones of the French orchestral repertoire. They are coupled with three works by Arthur Honegger. Critically acclaimed performances.

Unlike many piano arrangements, all these pieces have been arranged by the composers themselves for four hands. The Piano Duo Trenkner-Speidel presents these arrangements in authentic interpretations on a sonorous Steinway concert grand piano from 1901. Evelinde Trenkner and Sontraud Speidel have recorded a whole series of CDs on MDG exhibiting their perfect symbiosis.

Alpha bring down from the archive shelves at Radio France, a series of recordings related to the composer, director and pianist Arthur Honegger.The wax engravings of Rugby or Pacific 2.3.1 symphonic movements are famous (or at least known) but music and record lovers will covet this rare Decca version of Symphony No.3 'Liturgique' under the direction of the author. Also to be discovered are fifteen rare melodies, presented and sung here by voices chosen by Honegger, all the more interesting since the composer himself sat at the piano. A priceless window onto the world of Arthur Honegger.

This CD brings together compositions from slightly more than a hundred years, featuring treatments of the ‘railroad’ theme which are now idyllic or impressionistic, now realistic or even smacking of social criticism, but in classical form.The variety of forms and wealth of ideas in these compositions from France, Sweden, the U.S.A., Brazil, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and Germany even surprised the conductor on this CD, Jir¡i Stárek – whose father was a railroad worker …

Such diverse musicians as the Strauss family dynasty in Vienna, Antonín Dvorák and Arthur Honegger, were all infected with railroad fever. The feeling of intoxication induced by sheer speed, the implacability of mechanical forces, the menace inherent in acceleration, the clatter of the wheels, the whistling and hooting of the valves, but also the stillness following a thunderous journey – all these are found with varying degrees of accentuation in the colorful and exciting orchestral works featured on this disc.