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Re: The right tone for French music

Author: Liquorice
Date: 2020-07-24 23:49

I was driving in my car today and on the radio heard a performance of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune. I was completely absorbed by the orchestral playing on what was clearly an older recording and couldn't wait to hear which orchestra was playing in the announcement at the end.

The flute (during the enormous solos) and the oboe used hardly any vibrato at all! All of the woodwinds played with sounds which I could only describe as being extremely colourful. In today's world they would be considered too "bright" compared to the typical "Euro-sound". What I found so captivating was how the woodwind soloists could modulate the tone colour, all this highlighted by the lack of vibrato. The strings sounded sumptuous, the ensemble playing was almost always perfect and the pacing of dynamic and tempo was exhilarating. But even with these highly personal tone colours, the various instruments blended and balanced extremely well together. I was quite surprised to discover that the recording was of a young Pierre Boulez with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, sometime from the 1960s I believe.

I've spent the afternoon listening to various recordings of this piece. I find Boulez's later recording with the Cleveland Orchestra very inferior. The flute and oboe play with incessant vibrato which becomes boring within a single bar. The clarinet is so "dark" as to seem dull. The luminosity and spectacular tonal palate of the earlier recording is just not there. Even Les Siècles with François- Xavier Roth seem bland to me in comparison with this early Boulez recording.

The recording by the New Philharmonia may not be "French" in some of the stereotypical ways in which we may understand that descriptor, but I find it to be French in the very best possible ways and I am extremely happy to have discovered it for myself today.

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The right tone for French music new

ruben

2020-07-21 13:05