Eloq uence MENDELSSOHN Overtures Symphony No. 4 Italian A Midsummer Night s Dream SCHUBERT Rosamunde: Incidental Music L Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Ernest Ansermet
CD 1 57 31 FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) 1 Overture: Ruy Blas, Op. 95 8 07 2 Overture: Die schöne Melusine, Op. 32 10 52 3 Overture: The Hebrides (Fingal s Cave), Op. 26 9 39 Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 Italian 4 I Allegro vivace 8 16 5 II Andante con moto 6 41 6 III Con moto moderato 7 11 7 IV Saltarello (Presto) 6 10 CD 2 62 33 A Midsummer Night s Dream 1 Overture, Op. 21 11 48 Incidental Music Op. 61: 2 Scherzo 4 39 3 Notturno 6 29 4 Wedding March 4 55 FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) Rosamunde, D.747 Incidental music to Helmina von Chézy s play 5 Overture (Die Zauberharfe, D.644) 9 46 6 Ballet Music No. 1 in B minor 7 51 Previously unpublished 7 Entr acte No. 2 in D major (Andante) 3 06 8 Entr acte No. 3 in B flat major (Andantino) 6 46 9 Ballet Music No. 2 in G major 6 42 L Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Total timing: 120 04 Ernest Ansermet
If it is somewhat difficult today to rank the music of Felix Mendelssohn then it is altogether easier to place Franz Schubert among the great composers, probably because Schubert invested being alive into his music and takes listeners to different worlds in his pieces whether song, chamber, piano or orchestral; music that searches, if not always arriving, and doing so in often sublime and transporting invention. That Mendelssohn does not necessarily do so (although he certainly had an ability to paint pictures in his music) does not make him an inferior composer. More urbane his output might be, but his skill and invention are of the highest order, richly melodic, gossamer and ingenious. Felix Mendelssohn (more properly Mendelssohn Bartholdy his banker-father, Abraham, added Bartholdy to the family s surname when he became a Protestant Christian) was a virtuoso pianist and organist born in Hamburg in Northern Germany. Mendelssohn also developed the art of conducting into a skill beyond the beating of time. He was conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and rescued Bach s St. Matthew Passion from then oblivion. Felix s talents did not stop there; he was also a fine violinist and he also embraced painting and literature with brilliance. His elder sister, Fanny, was also a notable pianist, and she composed, too. Felix was a prodigy, performing and composing while a teenager, and it was as a seventeenyear-old that Mendelssohn created the miraculous Overture for A Midsummer Night s Dream; he added further incidental music for Shakespeare s play a few years later. For all his relatively short life, Mendelssohn enjoyed a packed and fulfilling time one of notable appointments and much travel. In London, a favourite in royal circles, he played Beethoven s fifth piano concerto; his trip to Scotland inspired the Scottish Symphony (No. 3) and the overture The Hebrides (Fingal s Cave); and his Italian Symphony was as a direct consequence of an extended visit to that country. The four movements of the Italian Symphony include a sunny opening one (Ernest Ansermet omits the repeat of the exposition, despite Mendelssohn s several bars of lead-back, albeit usually the norm for performances of this era), a nocturnal march for the second, a relaxed minuet-like third and a swirling Salterello (an Italian dance) for an invigorating finale. He opts for typical clarity and point in the first movement, leaving no doubt as to Mendelssohn s skills as a melodist, contrapuntalist and orchestrator. He also outlines beautifully the contours of the third movement and opts for rhythmic acuity rather than breakneck speed in the finale (unlike Otto Klemperer, of all conductors, in his early- 1950s Vox recording with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra). By design, the Suisse Romande Orchestra s woodwind section adds edge not for Ansermet an orchestral sound that is too homogeneous and there is much delicacy and dexterity in the Overture to A Midsummer Night s Dream in, by turns, a subtle, sensitive and muscular account. A nimble version of the Scherzo and an unsentimental one of the Nocturne (blessed with some lovely hornplaying and an unimpeachably Romantic approach) follow. Mendelssohn s abilities to paint pictures in music and capture a mood are well displayed by the overtures that Ansermet recorded for Decca. Die schöne Melusine is on the verge of being a tone poem and its watery allusions might just have been, with hindsight, a distant inspiration to Wagner as he began to think of the opening scene of Das Rheingold. Ansermet s account of Ruy Blas is second to none in shaping and detailing. The Hebrides is also alive with watery figuration, along with mists and tempest, Ansermet hoisting the storm cones a little earlier than do some conductors, with a notable increase in tempo as black clouds are viewed on the horizon, thus making the clarinet tune that then appears (almost as the eye of the storm ) that bit more consolatory. In contrast with Mendelssohn s upbringing, the Vienna-born Franz Schubert was the son of an impoverished schoolmaster. Nevertheless Schubert père was still able to teach the young Franz who sang (as a boy soprano) in a chapel choir and played the violin in the school orchestra. Like Mendelssohn, the even shorterlived Schubert (ill-health setting in five years before his death) was composing as a teenager. It is, however, the over-600 song settings, chamber works such as the Trout Quintet, the string quartet Death and the Maiden and the String Quintet in C, the late piano sonatas, and the last two symphonies that place Schubert into the upper echelons of composers, amongst the immortals indeed. Schubert s music for the stage is small in terms of his catalogue. The overture that is now known as Rosamunde was actually composed for Die Zauberharfe (The Magic Harp). Rosamunde is a play by Helmina von Chézy (the librettist for Weber s opera Euryanthe). Schubert s extensive score, lasting about an hour, includes not only the popular Overture, but also the perky Ballet
Music in G here from Ansermet ideal in tempo and rhythmic buoyancy and the elevated Entr acte in B flat, a haunting interlude that can seem to magically breeze in from Elysian Fields. Not included on the original LP issue and now published for the first time is the Ballet Music in B minor, given a trenchant and chiseled reading with syncopation unerringly swung, the whole gracefully shaped. Ansermet, for all the twentieth-century and French and Russian music that we associate with him, was no stranger to Austro-German music. He recorded the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, as well as selected symphonies by Haydn and Mozart direct, insightful and satisfying performances. With music such as Schubert s for Rosamunde, which might be thought off as falling into the category of occasional music, we find Ansermet both attentive and engaged with pieces that demonstrate that even when composing for incidental purposes, Schubert was unable to distance himself from using music as a deeply expressive vehicle for his innermost feelings. The Overture, as conducted by Ansermet, is summoning, elegant and vital, with a real fizz to the Allegro sections, a reminder that Ansermet was also a man of the theatre not least as a conductor of ballet. The B flat Entr acte is beautifully shaped and eloquently expressive, the performers literally hugging the music. In some of the sections of the B minor Ballet Music there are numerous instances where Schubert touches the heart and suggests a distant place that just might be worth investigating, somewhere over the rainbow not for the sake of trying too hard but because it was innate to his nature and his complex and troubled response to the world around him. Colin Anderson Swiss conductor ERNEST ANSERMET was born in Vevey on 11 November 1883 and died aged 85 in Geneva on 20 February 1969. He was inclined to music from an early age, learning the violin and the clarinet. He was also interested in mathematics and taught the subject. Ansermet studied music in Paris and Geneva and made his conducting debut in 1910. Although Ansermet is particularly associated with the Geneva-based L Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, he also guestconducted throughout his career including in America (with numerous top orchestras there and in 1962 conducting Debussy s Pelléas et Mélisande, an opera Ansermet twice recorded, at the Metropolitan, New York) and England (with London orchestras and not least when he conducted the première of Benjamin Britten s opera The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in 1946). Ansermet had previously made his debut at the Salzburg Festival, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1942. Ansermet s relationship with the Suisse Romande Orchestra lasted for 50 years from 1918, when he founded the orchestra, to 1967 when he stood down as its conductor (and handed the reins to Paul Kletzki). Ansermet continued to work in Geneva until his death; his final concert was in December 1968 and consisted of a typically eclectic mix of composers on that occasion it was J.S. Bach, Bartók, Debussy and Honegger. In his early days (between 1911 and 1927) Ansermet held appointments in Montreux and Buenos Aires and also conducted for Diaghilev s Ballets Russes company. It is however the Ansermet/Suisse Romande association that remains an indivisible partnership one kept alive by the many recordings they made for Decca and which document Ansermet s highlyregarded interpretations of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky (he knew all three composers) as well as lucid and satisfying versions of symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms (both complete) and Haydn as well as copious further examples of French, German and Russian repertoire, both core and less familiar. LP collectors have long treasured these recordings, which fully exploit the splendid acoustics of the Victoria Hall in Geneva, and they continue to grace the catalogue on compact disc for their musical and audiophile excellence. Ansermet prepared performances notable for their clarity and intelligence; he took all he needed from the composer s score and saw no need to add his own gloss (or vanity) but to focus on the composer s intentions and as Ansermet himself said to touch the heart of the music so as to make its heart-beats heard by the listener. Thus Ansermet s art is not only authoritative it is also timeless and cuts through
PHOTO: DECCA fads and fashions. Criticism has been levied on the technical quality of the Suisse Romande Orchestra. While it is true that the ensemble was not super-virtuoso or immersed in centuries-old tradition, what is always apparent in these recordings is that the orchestra consisted of dedicated and knowledgeable musicians very much attuned to Ansermet s direction and leaving the listener in no doubt as to their candid commitment to musical truth. Sometimes fallible in execution, maybe but also capable of inspiration there is a musical focus that engrosses, illuminates and sustains. Colin Anderson Ernest Ansermet
Recording producers: John Mordler (Overtures, Italian Symphony); Ray Minshull (A Midsummer Night s Dream, Rosamunde) Recording engineers: James Lock (Overtures, Italian Symphony); Roy Wallace (A Midsummer Night s Dream, Rosamunde) Recording location: Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, January 1960 (A Midsummer Night s Dream, Rosamunde), November 1964 (Overtures, Italian Symphony) Remastering: The Audio Archiving Company, London, UK; Digital Compact Disc Mastering, Sydney, Australia Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Cover image: Queen Titania, Jozef Szekeres 1999 www.blackmermaid.com www.elf-fin.deviantart.com Art direction: Chilu Tong www.chilu.com Booklet editor: Bruce Raggatt
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