Honegger: La Danse des Morts, Nocturne, Pastorale d’été. Michel Piquemal (baritone), Claudine Collart (soprano), Anne Seghers (contralto), Jean Davy (narrator), Ensemble vocal Roland de Lassus, Jeune Orchestre Symphonique de Douai, Henri Vachey. Calliope CAL 9855 (1992) barcode 3149025056665, also found under barcode 750582057724 (presumably a distributor’s barcode)
Reissue Phaia Music PHU 042 (2014) 4260277740429:
Recorded January 1981 (La Danse des Morts), 1991 (Nocturne, Pastorale d’été)
Who would have guessed? These are great recordings
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 10 August 2013
Don’t make assumptions. On paper, the “Douai Youth Symphony Orchestra” under Henri Vachey would seem an unengaging proposition, especially when you have (in Danse des Morts) the extraordinary wartime recording of Munch and Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (link will open new tab to my review) or the no-less extraordinary live recording by the same, in 1952, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Charles Munch in Boston: The Early Years on West Hill Radio Archives) or Michel Corboz and the Gulbenkian Orchestra from 1989 on Erato), and, in the lush and atmospheric “Pastorale d’été”, Hermann Scherchen with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Munch live with Orchestre National de France, Bernstein with New York (reissued in 1998 in “The Bernstein Century – 20th-Century French Masterpieces”, Sony SMK 60695, review pending), Serge Baudo with the Czech Philharmonic, Charles Dutoit with the Bavarian Radio (link to my review on Amazon.com pending repost here), Michel Plasson with Toulouse (my review on Amazon), Jesus Lopez-Cobos in Lausanne (my review on Amazon), Tamas Vasary in Bournemouth (my review), Vladimir Jurowski in London (my review), Fabio Luisi in Geneva (my review) – and that’s mentioning only my favorite Pastorales.
In fact, I had Vachey’s Danse des Morts on LP (see entry on Discogs.com). It was recorded in January 1981 and was the only modern version available in the LP era (I’m counting out the very elusive LP from an unidentified label, 
label number L5027, presumably narrated and sung in German, recorded on June 29, 1983, by Collegium Musicum der Berliner Universitäten under Winfried Radeke, paired with a capella choral works of Hanns Eisler). Munch’s 1941 recording, with narrator Jean-Louis Barrault delivering his hallucinated homilies, was so great and apparently unsurpassable, that it seems to have preempted any subsequent attempt. So it was brave of Vachey and his Youth Orchestra to try and walk in that shadow. I heard that LP some two decades ago, and I had a negative recollection of it. I didn’t have a score back then (wasn’t even aware that there were a few cuts in Munch’s old studio recording) and wasn’t able to judge the orchestral performance (I remember finding the orchestral introduction curiously plodding and bizarre, without the tautness of Munch – sure, unaware, I was listening to the uncut version!), but I had the memory that it failed on its weak narrator.
The Vachey LP came with no pairing, which, at 31:14 minutes (that’s adding the timings of both side indicated on the back cover), was stingy even for LP. It is for the CD reissue that Calliope had Vachey and his orchestra record the two fillers, Pastorale d’été and Nocturne, in 1991, for a TT that remains pretty stingy for a CD, less than 50 minutes. Calliope still calls the orchestra the Douai Youth SO, although I’m not sure it still was a youth orchestra by then. It is today a professional orchestra. More than 30 years after the recording of Danse des Morts, those youths are now closer to their retirement (and so am I, sigh).
I would have steered clear of the CD reissue then, if it hadn’t been for the short Nocturne. It is a rare piece of Honegger, his only published orchestral composition between “Mouvement symphonique No. 3” (1933) and the Second Symphony (1941). It was composed in 1936 and premiered by Hermann Scherchen. To the best of my knowledge, Vachey’s was its premiere recording, and it has been followed by only one more, in 1997, by the Brussels Radio Philharmonic Orchestra under Alexander Rahbari, for Discover International (with Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5, DICD 920371, barcode 741952437123) . It isn’t one of Honegger’s top-drawer compositions, but it is a very interesting piece nonetheless. It is one of the composer’s simple A-B-A forms (others are Pastorale d’été and Chant de Joie), slow and appeased / fast and sardonic / slow and appeased (Chant de Joie is the other way around). In it the composer sought to depict, in his own words, “the restful night, as you’d like to spend it in the countryside. But this dream is soon chased away by the reality of urban nights. After the fever, the longing for calm, in conclusion, brings back the opening theme.” Although the writing in the outer sections, with its fugal divisi violins and elaborate woodwind and brass accompaniment, anticipates the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, it isn’t as evocative and poetic as Pastorale d’été. But the orchestration is, as usual with Honegger, ingenious and ear catching, and the middle and animated part is intriguing for its echoes of the boisterous moods of Les Six, and even more specifically, Satie’s Parade (although Honegger, in contradiction with Les Six’ “Cocteau-ish” official party-line, professed no admiration for the recluse of Arcueil): obviously the urban nights are festive and sleepless. Incidentally, that middle part is in fact transplanted with no change from an Interlude written by Honegger in 1934 for his (failed) ballet “Semiramis”, but you won’t find it on the only recording of the ballet, conducted by Leopold Hager on Timpani 1C1016 barcode 3377891310165 (see my review on Amazon.com pending repost here), because the composer wrote another version of the interlude, which is what the recording plays. The Boosey study score of Nocturne came up cheap a few months ago on eBay, and I bought it with no real prospect of ever hearing it, just hoarding “in case” – what a clever move that was. In the fast section there is a very original indication, that I’ve seen nowhere else: a glissando followed by a tremolo sign on the strings, with the instruction “make the sound undulate”. It starts in Vachey’s recording at 4:33. I imagine Honegger was meaning for the strings to imitate the sound of the Ondes Martenot (an instrument he had used in the recent Joan at the Stake).
I just chanced on, bought, received and listened to the disc of Rahbari. It is always difficult to judge the interpretive merits of a version without any comparison. At least, with Rahbari, the ear heard everything that the eye saw on the score, and he was also remarkably faithful to the score’s metronome indications. But then, his outer sections were also disagreeably unatmospheric, and it was hard to think that it wasn’t due to his too strict observance of Honegger’s tempo, as much as his inability to obtain (or even ask) from his violins the pianissimo demanded by Honegger: his fiddlers produced a shrill forte. Given that Vachey’s Nocturne was downloadable for less than one euro, I decided it was worth the try.
And it was. Hearing Vachey entirely confirms my hunches about Rahbari: broader tempo (44 quarter-notes/mn, to Rahbari’s 52 and the score’s 54) and strings playing a true pianissimo, and all the atmosphere is there. And while you could fear that the slower opening tempo would translate into a lack of dynamism and boisterousness in the fast section (it simply doubles the tempo of the slow one), in fact it gives it lots of character as well. Finally, the Douai orchestra does not sound AT ALL like a tentative youth orchestra, it sounds just great. This is the version to have of Nocturne, forget Rahbari.
This was so good that I downloaded Pastorale d’été. And it confirms that the Douai orchestra is much better than you’d think on paper. Much to my astonishment, it is one of the most beautiful and atmospheric ones I’ve ever heard. There have been a number of very spacious Pastorale d’été – by increasing order of expansiveness of the opening slow section, Scherchen, Zinman, Munch, Luisi, Baudo, Plasson, see links above – and, sure, they were atmospheric. But I’ve recently been bowled over by Jurowski (recordings on the London Philharmonic’s house label, with Symphony No. 4 and Christmas Cantata), and it has completely changed my listening perspective. Jurowski is the swiftest account I’ve ever heard – and, against all odds, he makes it work. Not only does his Pastorale remain very atmospheric (thanks to the sumptuous sonics and silky orchestra, but also the ability of the soloists to let their melodies soar and sing), but it acquired an underlying tension absent from all the others. Jurowski’s summer is not just a sultry place where it is too hot to move, it is a season of passionate love. And he has made me find almost sluggish and too languid all those very expansive versions which I had liked before.
But Vachey is the most expansive of all – compare his 9:11 to Luisi’s 9:01, Plasson’s 8:53, Baudo’s 8:34, Scherchen’s 8:28, and Jurowski’s 7:10 – and I find it beautifully lush, songful, atmospheric, calm – a lazy, sultry summer day, suggesting the morning awakening in Beethoven’s Pastorale (and that it is not a morning awakening in Beethoven’s symphony doesn’t matter – it is often played as if it was, and everybody forgets that it is an “awakening of merry feelings upon arrival in the countryside”). If you want to be really picky, the Douai strings don’t sound as silky (and abundant) as Plasson’s or Lusi’s – but I think they sound good enough. Vachey’s sonics are also much better, more natural-sounding and transparent than Baudo’s close-up and over-exposed pickup, and than Plasson’s very distant one. The only version that compares in the same style is Luisi’s, but it can be found only with his set of the complete symphonies, which sells at ludicrous prices on the marketplace these days and anyway the performances are quite problematic in their uniformly slow interpretive slant. But Vachey is the only among those expansive ones that retains a sense of nonchalance even in the middle and fast section, at 3:55 (notated “vif et gai”, vivacious and merry). Some may take exception and find it sluggish; I like that it carries over the mood of lazy abandon.
So with all that, I decided to give another listen to my LP of Danse des Morts (since then I’ve bought the CD). In fact, it’s a great version. Sure, narrator Jean Davy is sometimes a bit matter-of-fact, far from the incredible histrionics of Barrault. But the voice is timbrally great, imposing, authoritative, a voice for standing in the pulpit and delivering the passionate preaches of Bossuet (the famous 17th-Century French bishop and theologian, considered the greatest orator of his time, see Wikipedia). And further on, he does rise to the occasion (just try his line over chorus and orchestral tutti c’était une armée extrêmement nombreuse / t’was an exceedingly numerous army at 6:15 in track 1 – incidentally, only Davy performs it as written, in rhythmical sync with chorus. Barrault doesn’t deliver that line) but with always more restraint than Barrault, which is not necessarily a bad thing. [An addition from August 2024] Davy was for 10 years a member of Comédie-France, and even better, reading his bio on the website of Comédie-Française (in French only), I discover that he first started his artistic path as a pupil of famed pianist Alfred Cortot… That probably explains why he sounds so much on top of Honegger’s Sprechgesang. He is miles above his [emendation August 2024] three modern competitors, the wimpish Oers Kisfaludy with Corboz (see link above), the infuriatingly matter-of-fact and uninvolved Lambert Wilson with Edmon Colomer – also a Calliope production, on CAL 9526, and the German actor Christoph Bantzer in a live performance from 2012 in Hamburg, Germany, released on Troubadisc TRO-CD 01441, who sounds more like Captain Kangaroo than a mythical Hebrew prophet (links to my reviews).
Youth Orchestra? They, and the “Ensemble vocal Roland de Lassus” chorus, sound great. I hear nothing that sounds tentative or rough-hewn. The sonics are also great, affording absolute clarity on all the details of Honegger’s dense orchestration. That the performance does without the optional organ (Honegger asks, if not available, to double the parts of bassoons, horns and trombones) is all for the better: it may be great in the concert hall, but on recordings it only clogs the textures. There is an admirable transparency to the different choral parts and an intelligibility to the words they sing (and sometimes shout), that is paralleled in no other version, and they sound very much like a chamber choir (and indeed I am reminded that the piece was premiered by Paul Sacher’s Basel chamber choir and orchestra, as the Christmas Cantata), but it never comes, as could have been feared, at the expense of power. In those moments of highest tension and din, the chorus certainly isn’t as polished as your typical Westminster Choir or what you’d expect of a chorus singing with the New York, Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic, but it’s better that way: you don’t want “elegance” and “polish” in those moments, you want the din and violence of the mob, as in a Bach passion.
Vachey conducts with a sure and unexceptionable sense of tempo, and, sonics helping, he often has more bite than even Munch in the orchestral explosions, although his concluding “Affirmation” doesn’t come near the suffocating violence of Munch’s, not in his 1941 studio recording but in the live version he gave in 1952 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, that has been published recently by West Hill Radio Archives (see link above).
Baritone Michel Piquemal is also one of this version’s great assets. In the Lamento (track 3), the voice is noble, tender, beautifully poised, with a perfection of French diction, a bit lachrymose in its characterization but I found that it suited ideally the music. It is Pelleas weeping, and he’d make you forget Munch’s unforgettable Charles Panzéra. Colomer’s Herbert Claessens is excellent too, and Corboz’ Gilles Cachemaille is fine, but more basso-timbred, not as beautifully characterized as Piquemal, and not aided by Corboz’ too slow tempo here.
The two ladies, soprano Claudine Collart and mezzo Anne Seghers (for some reason the latter is not credited in the CD reissue), are the minor letdown (in track 6, the incredibly Messiaen-sounding Espérance dans la Croix). The latter’s timbre is undistinguished, the former has the required highs and angelic timbre, but it seems to me that both are often singing off-pitch. The sonic pickup is also very close, exposing all the minuscule imperfections of soprano Collart that would have gone unnoticed in the concert hall or with more natural-sounding sonics. Not enough to make it unbearable and invalidate that version, in all they sing no more than 3 minutes, and Collart is fine in the sublime concluding flourish. Corboz’ ladies are fine, Colomer’s soprano isn’t very good, but anyway, it is fundamentally their respective narrator who invalidate those two versions. Vachey’s Jean Davy isn’t perfect and certainly doesn’t erase the memory of Barrault, but he is MUCH better than I remembered, has many good things to offer and is ultimately more than acceptable.
Who would have guessed? This is a great Honegger disc, and (still upon repost of this review in July 2024) the one modern version of Danse des Morts to have (alongside Munch and Barrault and, if you can, Munch live in Boston in 1952 with narrator Arnold Moss, almost as impressive as Barrault).