Honegger: Une Cantate de Noël (Gilles Cachemaille), La Danse des morts (Naoko Okada, Brigitte Balleys, Gilles Cachemaille, narrator Oers Kisfaludy), Choeur et Orchestre Gulbenkian (Recorded July 1989). Erato “Musifrance” 2292-45520-2 (1990) barcode 022924552021:
Reissue Cascavelle VEL 3023 (c. 2000) 7619930302318:
Note: copyright at back of the Cascavelle CD says 1990 as the Erato release, but Cascavelle’s catalog number suggests a release circa 1999/2000. Cascavelle being co-producer of the recording published by Erato, 1990 is likely the copyright of the first Erato edition rather than of the Cascavelle reissue.
Compiled in 9 CDs Cascavelle VEL 3025 (2001) 7619930302516 “Honegger Œuvres symphoniques et chorales”:
Remastered and compiled in 2 CDs VEL 3091 (2005) 7619930309119 “Corboz Edition” vol. 5 with Le Roi David from Cascavelle VEL 1017 and Cantique de Pâques from Cascavelle VEL 1013:
Compiled on CD 26 of Erato 5054197186783 (36 CDs) “Michel Corboz Complete Erato Recordings – Classical & Romantic Eras” (2023):
A fine Christmas Cantata, a Danse des Morts that stumbles on a weak narrator – hard to walk in the shadow of Munch’s Barrault
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 27 July 2013
In March 1941, shortly after the composition’s world premiere (given in Basel by its commissioner Paul Sacher on March 2, 1940) and the French premiere in German-occupied Paris (26 January 1941), Charles Munch made a historical recording of Honegger’s La Danse des Morts/Danse of the Dead (on a text by the famous poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel, also the author of the book of Joan at the Stake; link will open new tab to my review). Historical not only because of its vintage, but also because of its well-nigh insurpassable interpretive greatness. It benefited not only from Munch’s high-strung and biting conducting, the total commitment of all those involved and especially the choral forces, the moving plangency of baritone Charles Panzera, but also from the extraordinary histrionics of narrator Jean-Louis Barrault – something like France’s Lawrence Olivier. Barrault didn’t shy before Claudel’s mystically Catholic text, he impersonated an hallucinated prophet, a biblical Savonarola. I’ll venture that Barrault’s performance was possible only in an era dominated by the radio. In today’s world, in which the movies and TV have imposed more “realistic” restraint, it is likely that nobody would dare. Yet Claudel’s text requires nothing short of it .
However, Munch’s recording suffered some horribly frustrating flaws: the antiquated 1941 sonics made the words sung often unintelligible, and whatever happened in the orchestra had to be imagined rather than heard, some of the densest parts were mere noise. Also, it had cuts, in the orchestral introduction and a more substantial one in the 5th movement, “La Réponse de Dieu” (The Response of God). Nonetheless, although La Danse des Morts is one of Honegger’s most powerful and impactful compositions, not many recordings followed Munch’s pioneering one, and again I think that it is because it was such a great version that nobody dared. Nobody wants to imitate or pastiche Barrault, yet it is hard to imagine another way. I am only aware of two recording at the end of the LP era, one taped in 1981 by the French label Calliope, with an obscure youth orchestra led by an obscure conductor, Henri Vachey, and my recollection was that it failed on a week and meek narrator. In fact, listening to it again (a few months after posting this review), I now realize that it was a great version (Calliope CAL 9855, link will open new tab to my review). The other one was a very elusive version on 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.
Anyway, it isn’t like the field is overcrowded, and the Calliope version was reissued on CD only in 1992, so from the outset the recording of Michel Corboz with the Portuguese Gulbenkian Orchestra and Chorus, made in July 1989, deserved a warm welcome. Finally one could hear the COMPLETE, uncut Danse des Morts, and all those orchestral details that the eye sees on the score but that the ear didn’t perceive in Munch’s war-time recording – and Corboz lets you hear a lot. Other than the reinstated cuts, Corboz’ version is also interesting for letting you hear it exactly as the score has it – Munch, no doubt with the composer’s imprimatur and probably for sake of clarity, moved some of the narrator’s lines-over-orchestra a few bars before written, and Vachey also jostles them a bit. The singers are fine – baritone Gilles Cachemaille (in Lamento, track 2, and “Espérance dans la Croix/Hope in the Cross”, track 5) may not have the uniquely touching plangency of Munch’s Panzera (Vachey’s Michel Piquemal was very close) but he is good enough, and the two ladies are perfect, with especially soprano Naoko Okada graced with a pure and angelic-sounding soprano voice, that I find better than Munch’s affected and “old-style” Odette Turba-Rabier. The ladies were a relatively weak point of the Vachey/Calliope recording.
Not that everything is perfect, and some of it has to do with Corboz’ choices of pacing: the Lamento and beginning of “Espérance dans la Croix” are a bit static – the more flowing pace of Munch is much preferable. Corboz doesn’t come near either the bite and impact of Munch, not so much in his war-time studio version but in an extraordinary live performance – and an uncut one too -, given in Boston in 1952, and which has surfaced in 2007 under the auspices of the Canadian label West Hill Radio Archives. There the American narrator, Arnold Moss, may not have quite the dramatic impact of Barrault, but he is very good (and his French accent is very proficient), the sonics offer remarkably vivid clarity (some orchestral details come through better than with Corboz four decades later) and Munch betters himself, in flexibility but also in powerful bite. Nowhere can you hear the latter better than in the choral and orchestral explosions at the beginning of the final movement, “Affirmation” (it isn’t cued but with Corboz it starts at 7:32 in track 5, and with Munch at 7:53 in the last track): they are fine with Corboz, but with Munch they sound like the whiplashes of God. But Corboz remains frustratingly placid and tensionless in the chorus leading to that explosion, starting track 5 at 4:38: God proclaims his alliance with the people of Israel, it should be jubilant and triumphant, not placid. I’ve also spotted a couple of instrumental inaccuracies, but let’s not be pedantic about such things, they will go unnoticed by listeners without score – and possibly even to those with.
But those would be mere details, easily offset by the comfort of Corboz stereo sonics. However, and regrettably, Corboz stumbles on his weak narrator. Well, the guy tries, but the voice is juvenile, high-pitched and tenor-like (and not “helden-“), nowhere near the beef and power of Barrault’s hallucinated prophecies and incantations, more like a teenager pretending, it sounds at time comical – not in a good way. I wouldn’t bet a penny on the guy founding a new religion or leading the Jews out of Egypt. Terribly frustrating.
In 2002 the label Calliope published a new recording, by Edmon Colomer. Also a good one, despite a less-than-convincing soprano, but again: it fails on the matter-of-fact delivery of narrator Lambert Wilson, who could be describing the content of his plate or talking about his latest vacation – that’s prophecizing after Vatican II, I guess (see my review). [August 2024 addendum ]. Likewise with the 2010 live version from Hamburg, Germany, on Troubadisc TRO-CD 01441 (sung and spoken in the original French), whose narrator sounds more like a mild-mannered, somewhat professoral German Captain Kangaroo, or a Catholic priest quietly reciting his homilies at Sunday church, than like a mythical Hebrew prophet. Jean Davy, the narrator of the 1981 Vachey version, is also a bit matter-of-fact, especially at the beginning, but the voice is timbrally great, imposing and authoritative, making it easy to imagine him standing in the pulpit, and later on in the piece he does rise to the occasion.
Munch remains the reference. The ideal Munch Danse des Morts would be Jean-Louis Barrault in Boston in 1952, but since ideal is of God and not of Man… try and hear both. Corboz offers many fine things, but with the endless frustration of his weak narrator. Vachey is not entirely ideal, but he remains the best modern version. One important and possibly decision-tipping consideration however is that Corboz-Erato is the only version that offers the Claudel text with English translation. None of the two Calliope versions, Vachey and Colomer, do (Colomer has French text only). Not a problem for me since I have the score, but for the “normal” listener, understanding is indispensable.
Another factor is, of course, the filler. A Christmas Cantata is Honegger’s last work of substance, although it is based on sketches for a Passion Play written in the same years as Danse des Morts and ultimately abandonned (because its librettist prefered to go sit near Jesus than to write of his plights, a defensible choice), and Corboz contributes one of the best versions I’ve heard, along with Ernest Ansermet’s now half-a-century old recording (link will open new tab to my review) and those of Marin Neary (1987, EMI CDC 7 49559 2, barcode 077774955928, review pending) and Thierry Fischer on Hyperion CDA67688 (2007, barcode 034571176888, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost here). Corboz’ 1989 sonics are slightly better than Ansermet’s, letting you hear a number of orchestral details that Decca let get covered by the powerful Swiss chorus – although they still let room for improvement, and listening to Corboz the eye still sees many things on the score that the ear can’t hear: the versions of Neary and Fischer are more satisfying in that respect. Corboz’ Portugese chorus is uniformly good, and the conductor has an unexceptionable sense of tempi, with, in particular, a superb introduction, very brooding, even more than the old Georges Tzipine (an early champion of Honegger and a recording from 1954, reissued to CD in 2005 on “Les Rarissimes de Arthur Honegger“, EMI 5 86477 2, see my review). Only in the jubilant concluding chorus/chorale “Laudate dominum omnes gentes” at 18:31 does he lack the sense of triumphant jubilation of Ansermet (and in truth nobody does, although Fischer (see link above) and Vladimir Jurowski (on the London Phlharmonic’s label, LPO 6 0058, published in 2011, barcode 854990001581, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost) come close, with marginally more drive but less energy and power). But many recordings of Christmas Cantata have failed on their baritone, often too basso-timbred, too operatic, too emphatic, too strongly foreign-accented. Ansermet had the exceptional Pierre Mollet, sweet-timbred, tender and noble, Pelleas singing the coming of Christ. Gilles Cachemaille is more basso-voiced than the “baryton-Martin” Mollet, but he is great too, with the same kind of nobility, simplicity and stylistic perfection (the British baritones of Neary, Fischer and Jurowski aren’t as good). A cause for complaint would be Erato’s single cue, as stingy as it is lazy. The Christmas Cantata may be in one movement, but it has various and easily recognizable sections. But truth is, only Decca for Ansermet, Hyperion for Fischer and LPO for Jurowski provide more, and not by much (three for Decca and LPO and two for Hyperion).
Too bad or the weak narrator of Danse des Morts. That makes the difference between what could have been a great CD, and what turns out to be only a frustrating CD.