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Editorial Reviews

The sound of Dutton's disc of early twentieth century French orchestral pieces conducted by their composers, recorded between 1930 and 1935, is surprisingly good: full, rounded, and free of interference. That makes it easier to enjoy and assess the composers' works and their performances as interpreters. Some of the music is justifiably obscure. Henri Tomasi's "Tam-Tam," a 1931 symphonic poem for chorus, soloists, and orchestra is an interesting cultural relic, an exercise in musical primitivism in its depiction of life in colonial West Africa, with what would have been an astonishing amount of repetition for its era, but of material far less engaging than that of "Boléro." Florent Schmitt's ballet "La Tragédie de Salomé" appeared just a few years after Strauss' opera. Musically it's far tamer (with a movement, "Les enchantments sur la mer," that's transparently a rip-off of Debussy's "La Mer"), but with a scenario that's more lurid, or at least more active: its final movement "is heralded by the storm breaking; violent seas, sandstorms and trees crashing down while the distant mountain erupts...Salomé is destroyed in the tumult," and all this depicted in a minute and a half of music. Philippe Gaubert's 1929 "Les chants de la mer," which has something of the sound of a film score, manages to be evocative without evoking Debussy. The album's primary raison d'ętre is Ravel's performance of "Boléro," one of the few recordings he made. The performance, with the Lamoureux Orchestra is rhythmically crisp and stately, but the composer allows the solo players in the first section room for expressive rubato. Ravel's reading is essentially reserved, and he doesn't bring the piece to the cataclysmic ending that has become standard; in fact, he is on record as taking offense at Toscanini's building to a big climax with an accelerando at the end. All this raises the question as to whether composers are necessarily the best interpreters of their own work, but wherever one comes down on that issue, it's intriguing to hear Ravel's own take on his most famous piece. Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide

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