Florent Schmitt, Second Symphony; BBCSO/Oramo

[Serial_Apologist]

I'd like to draw attention to tonight's performance of on tonight's Radio 3 in Concert at 7.30: BBC SO under Oramo. Not having realised that this French composer composed any symphonies whatsoever, I googled to discover that the 3-movement second was composed in the final stage of his life, and managed to find utube footage of the entire recorded work.

This will be powerfully impressive music to anyone who finds themselves drawn to this composer's music, notwithstanding his tarnished reputation. Stylistically Schmitt managed ostensibly to reconcile to his own satisfaction the post-Wagnerian harmonic language he shared with d'Indy, Magnard, and others associated the Schola Cantorum post-Franckians at the start of the 20th century with the styles of Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy and Ravel, but more ostentatiously than Roussel. Some while ago I decribed it as French impressionism on steroids - many will feel a strong kinship with the music of Bax, minus of course the Celtic influences, which may provide a negative spoiler to those antipathetic to the late romantic impressionism of such as Bax, Scott, Bridge and Respighi, so be warned!

[Richard Barrett]

While just bumping this concert up as due on very shortly, I'd like to draw attention to tonight's performance of on tonight's Radio 3 in Concert at 7.30: BBC SO under Oramo. Not having realised that this French composer composed any symphonies whatsoever, I googled to discover that the 3-movement second was composed in the final stage of his life, and managed to find utube footage of the entire recorded work.

Highly mysterious.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

While just bumping this concert up as due on very shortly, I'd like to draw attention to tonight's performance of on tonight's Radio 3 in Concert at 7.30: BBC SO under Oramo. Not having realised that this French composer composed any symphonies whatsoever, I googled to discover that the 3-movement second was composed in the final stage of his life, and managed to find utube footage of the entire recorded work.

Just to clarify - tonight's Radio 3 in Concert begins with a performance of the Second Symphony of Florent Schmitt (1870 - 1958), written in the year before the composer died.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09b0yd9

There are two recordings of the work available on youTube; one conducted by Charles Munch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLPOt8gS9tg

the other by Leif Segerstam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phDkSucoLYI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMPw1dHyC1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ytXccWXps

This article about the work might be of interest:

https://florentschmitt.com/2012/09/30/florent-schmitts-valedictory-composition/

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that clarification, ferney. The referred to article is very interesting, and by the looks of it there are other links to that page worth investigating. Outside the usual figureheads, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen and Boulez, with Satie and his aftermath, particularly Poulenc considered as kind of second ranking, the BBC never devotes more than scant attention to the outputs of French composers of the 20th century. Henri Barraud, a contemporary of Andre Jolivet we never hear of, was one who was much admired both by Koechlin and Messiaen. I for one hadn't heard of the composer Rabaud, and will look him up now.

The Roxburgh was most powerful and impressive, and brilliantly performed imo.

Later: I can't find anything on Rabaut - which has left me thinking that this name may be an incomplete anagram of Barraud!

[Maclintick]

Outside the usual figureheads, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen and Boulez, with Satie and his aftermath, particularly Poulenc considered as kind of second ranking, the BBC never devotes more than scant attention to the outputs of French composers of the 20th century.

& what about Henri Pousseur ? In the Glock era he was ranked as a significant figure alongside Boulez,Stockhausen, Berio etc...Seems to have disappeared without trace...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A pleasant piece, that I enjoyed listening to, and wouldn't mind hearing again - but not a "neglected masterpiece", and if I never did hear it again, I wouldn't be devastated. Does that make sense? I'm glad Oramo gave space on the programme for the work (and I much preferred it to the dreary Franck) - but there are much better works by Magnard, Koechlin, Ropartz - and even Roussel - that I've never seen programmed. I hope Mr Oramo gives some (at least) of these works some attention, too.


(Oh, and unless I misheard, the announcer got a fact wrong - Schmitt was 87 when he died, so could not have attended the premiere of the work when he was 88.)

[Richard Barrett]

& what about Henri Pousseur ? In the Glock era he was ranked as a significant figure alongside Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio etc...Seems to have disappeared without trace...

Pousseur wasn't French, he was Belgian. His music from the 1950s and 60s can indeed stand together with anything being produced then, Symphonies pour 15 instruments for example, but in the 1970s he lost his way somewhat and to my mind nothing he produced after that had much life in it. I have no idea why that is. Compared with those other luminaries he was a rather modest and unassuming personality. I knew him slightly and worked in the 90s with his daughter Marianne, a singer and specialist in Pierrot lunaire as well as exponent of her father's work.

[Richard Barrett]

I can't find anything on Rabaut - which has left me thinking that this name may be an incomplete anagram of Barraud!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rabaud

(He even had the same first name as Barraud!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

& what about Henri Pousseur ? In the Glock era he was ranked as a significant figure alongside Boulez,Stockhausen, Berio etc...Seems to have disappeared without trace...

Coincidentally, I heard three performances of Pousseur's Icare Apprenti back in July at "Performing Indeterminacy" a conference at Leeds University. The neglect might well have originated in Posseur's work in Inderterminate composition methods - and there may well be a resurgence in interest in his work among the younger generation of Musicians currently keen to explore such methods of working.

(What most impressed me about the Icare performances is how the same set of instructions brought the Musical interests and experiences of the performers centre stage - there was a youTube video of the London Sinfonietta, who gave a very "Darmstadt", pointilliste performance ["We've worked with Stockhausen - we know how this sort of Music is supposed to sound"] - a French Jazz Ensemble gave it more swing and warmth - and a solo pianist gave a performance/realization that made me wonder if she'd been studying the late Scriabin Sonatas recently.)

[Richard Barrett]

Coincidentally, I heard three performances of Pousseur's Icare Apprenti back in July at "Performing Indeterminacy" a conference at Leeds University. The neglect might well have originated in Posseur's work in Inderterminate composition methods - and there may well be a resurgence in interest in his work among the younger generation of Musicians currently keen to explore such methods of working.

That piece is from 1970 though - like almost everyone else Pousseur abandoned the indeterminate way of doing things not long afterwards.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That piece is from 1970 though - like almost everyone else Pousseur abandoned the indeterminate way of doing things not long afterwards.

Yes - I was writing when you posted yours, so only saw it after. The audience for the Leeds conference was very interesting: about half were my age (late fifties) and older, and half were in their thirties and younger. The "missing generation" reflecting the general mistrust (and even ridicule) with which Indeterminacy was regarded in the late '70s and afterwards - a general idea that these ideas were an aberration, a moment of madness that had been put aside for the more "sensible" traditional ways of working. It was terrific to see so many younger Musicians eager to engage with indeterminate methods of working and adopt these for themselves.

[Richard Barrett]

It was terrific to see so many younger Musicians eager to engage with indeterminate methods of working and adopt these for themselves.

Yes indeed, I've noticed this tendency myself.

[Serial_Apologist]

Pousseur wasn't French, he was Belgian. His music from the 1950s and 60s can indeed stand together with anything being produced then, Symphonies pour 15 instruments for example, but in the 1970s he lost his way somewhat and to my mind nothing he produced after that had much life in it. I have no idea why that is. Compared with those other luminaries he was a rather modest and unassuming personality. I knew him slightly and worked in the 90s with his daughter Marianne, a singer and specialist in Pierrot lunaire as well as exponent of her father's work.

My thought is that it was because he became interested in matters of provenance, continuity and historicism. I always warm to him when he spoke of Paris 1968, and of working multi-generically in an occupied campus: "The rock group had to abandon their anmplification in order to be able to hear the a capella group relayed through from one of the cloakrooms", or words to that effect. He had fondest memories of that time, in contrast, one understands, with Boulez, who never went along with the Occupy movement - though I did see him dedicate a performance of Eclat at the Victoria Hall in Geneva at which I had the amazing fortune to be present. That would have been in either May or June of that year. The place instantly erupted - revolutionary slogans rang out in unison - apart from an elderlyish couple in front of me who obstinately refused to join in the standing ovation which went on for several minutes, muttering "Ach, les jeunes! Stupides!" Afterwards I joined a band of French students who'd made their way down the eastern side of France on foot - little or no traffic was moving at that time - and we repaired to a brasserie where, several litres later at closing time, having sung a medley of traditional songs I didn't of course have any knowledge of, we piled the chairs and tables up around the entrances as a symbol of the Paris barricades, and the proprietors were cool about it. I was so drunk it took me until daybreak to find where I'd left my hotel!

[Richard Barrett]

My thought is that it was because he became interested in matters of provenance, continuity and historicism.

I think he was always interested in those things, for example in his operatic collaboration with Michel Butor Votre Faust which occupied him for much of the 1960s, but somewhere in the 1970s those same concerns somehow had a deadening effect; which they didn't for example on Berio.