Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871)
Overtures Volume 7
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava/Dario Salvi
rec. 2023, Kino Vesmír, Ostrava, Czech Republic
Naxos 8.574597 [76]
This is the seventh volume in Naxos’s ongoing series showcasing the music of Daniel-François-Esprit Auber. All but one of the CDs have featured conductor Dario Salvi, something of a specialist in the lesser known byways of mid-19th century early-Romantic repertoire. So far in this series we have heard him leading, variously, the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice, the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra.
The seven discs’ portmanteau title is actually somewhat misleading, for their content has not been confined solely to overtures. Instead, it has ranged more widely and adventurously over Auber’s output and has included plenty of incidental music taken from the operas and ballets with which his name is most closely associated. There has even been the odd standalone orchestral piece, as when vol. 2 included an early violin concerto that my colleague Gary Higginson considered “charming music, and well worth reviving”. Some of the works included in the series so far have been familiar but rather more – that violin concerto, for example, or the Grande ouverture pour l’inauguration de l’exposition à Londres that was included in vol. 3 – have been brought back to light after enduring many years of obscurity.
Those like me who are addicted to collecting complete series of works will no doubt have been snapping up each and every individual release. I suspect, however, that there may not have been a particularly substantial market for those discs in the series that were composed entirely of little-known or completely unknown works. The previous two volumes (review, review) certainly fell into that particular category, so it may well be a commercially sensible move for this latest one to include at least a couple of familiar titles – Le cheval de bronze, the overture to which often popped up in mid-20th century collections of orchestral showpieces, and Marco Spada, a ballet that has delighted those audiences fortunate enough to have caught a performance since its 1980s revival by Pierre Lacotte.
That is actually a rather more significant point than it might first appear. As you would rightfully expect, as a reviewer I listen repeatedly to every disc I receive before offering my opinion. In earlier days, however, when I was simply an enthusiast who listened to music for my own pleasure, the situation was somewhat different. If faced then with a disc of unfamiliar tracks that sequenced a number of different – and sometimes quite stylistically varied – pieces, none of which particularly took my fancy, I might very well have discarded it for good after just a single hearing or two. Indeed – and, more to the point here – I might well have discontinued buying any more discs in the same series. Thus, the inclusion of a few bits of familiar music here and there sensibly serves to offer a small but useful bridgehead into a CD’s contents and will thereby encourage some listeners to persevere in familiarising themselves with any hitherto unknown material.
My own introduction to the Le cheval de bronze overture came many years ago via an HMV Concert Classics LP. That was Popular French overtures (XLP 20008), in which the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Douglas Gamley – who, incidentally, was also noted for recreating the lost orchestral parts of Auber’s first cello concerto. Gamley’s 1950s performance is, like another from the same decade by Albert Wolff, a relatively heavyweight one. Both accounts thereby give a plausible impression that the overture might have been written in, say, 1875 or 1885 rather than, as was actually the case, four or five decades earlier. This new recording from conductor Dario Salvi adopts, in contrast, a lighter, airier approach, presumably aiming to achieve a more historically informed and authentic outcome. By carefully crafting a more transparent orchestral balance and adopting rather brisker tempi, Salvi invests Auber’s score with a much more appropriate sense of music that’s somewhat akin to skittish Rossini. I love the way in which he does that.
The following three tracks also showcase music from Le cheval de bronze, though this time not from the original 1835 opéra féerie. They derive instead from an 1857 productionof the work that, in a fashionably expanded form that now incorporated some substantial dance episodes, is more accurately categorised as an opera-ballet. Although Ivor Guest has written that the new material was simply an interpolated and completely new Act (The ballet of the Second Empire 1847-1858 [London, 1955], p. 114), Robert Ignatius Letellier’s typically detailed and useful CD booklet notes instead suggest that Auber undertook a more extensive revision and that new and substantial ballet sequences were composed for insertion in the existing first, third and fourth Acts. That is certainly how they are presented here.
Although the 1857 production was a commercial failure, there is in fact plenty of very attractive music here. Balletomanes will, in particular, appreciate the Act 4 pas de deux, sections of which were to be reworked later by Victor Gsovsky in creating his well-known Grand pas classique, a favourite exhibition piece for virtuoso dancers (there are several examples to be found on YouTube, my favourite being a peerless 1991 performance from Tatyana Paliy and Vladimir Malakhov that’s also available on the DVD Great stars of Russian ballet vol. 4 [VAI 4533]). These tracks show conclusively why dancers – and not just those aforementioned virtuosos – appreciate the sensibility, consideration and sheer skill that Auber demonstrated when writing his ballet scores. Incidentally, even in old age and after a lifetime’s confirmed bachelorhood, the still sprightly composer appears to have reciprocated his dancers’ admiration. Seated in a favourite chair in the Paris Opera’s foyer de la danse from which he keenly observed the prettiest members of the corps de ballet flirting with their aristocratic admirers, it’s said that he would wistfully sigh “This is the only room I am fond of. Pretty heads, pretty shoulders, pretty legs. As much as one could wish for. More than one could wish for…” (quoted in Guest, op. cit., p. 16).
In spite of the fact that it was apparently rather popular in mid-19th century Germany, the five-Act grand opera Le lac des fées nowadays falls into the category of lesser-known or even virtually unknown Auber. Mr Letellier’s booklet notes helpfully identify it as “possibly Auber’s most Romantic work” and outline its plot’s main themes. Those turn out to centre on the interaction between the inhabitants of the real world and those of its supernatural counterpart. That was, of course, a fashionably popular scenario at the time, with the otherworldly elements variously taking the shape of fairies (La sylphide, 1836), wilis (Giselle, 1841) or even libidinously cavorting dead nuns (Robert le diable, 1831). In the case of Le lac des fées, reality in the form that we know it is represented by the young student Albert. Meanwhile, Auber’s personification of the supernatural is Zélia, the queen of the fairies – with whom, just as you might expect, Albert falls in love.
The Le lac des fees overture begins in a stately, declamatory fashion but the composer soon introduces some more flowing, lyrical themes appropriate to both Queen Zélia’s mysterious magical powers and the theme of l’amour. Other music associated with the character of Rodolphe, Albert’s love rival, provides some vigorous contrast. The thematic pot pourri ends in the lively fashion that we have come to expect from the Auber overtures encountered in this series so far. Just like several of those others, this one fails to make a particularly strong impression on first hearing, but, having listened to it a few more times, I have come to warm to its good-natured, easy-going tunefulness. The following two tracks feature music from ballet episodes in the opera’s third Act. A stately yet foot-tapping marche des rois is suitably regal and dignified, while the following light-footed valse des étudiants is quite charming. Such pieces are generally shorter – just two or three minutes in length – and thematically simpler, for the very practical reason of the need to accommodate dancers’ physical limitations and not to over-tax them. As such, they successfully make an immediate and positive impression on the listener.
Auber’s opéra-comique Marco Spada was first presented in 1852 and – quite typically, given the freewheeling mix-and-match approach that he often took to his compositions – the composer returned to the story of the eponymous Italian bandit leader just five years later when he composed a ballet on the same subject. This new CD gives us a performance of the overture from the opera and the pas de Mme Rosati from the 1857 ballet. As the author of The overtures of Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (Newcastle, 2011), Mr Letellier must be one of the few people closely familiar with all of them, so his assessment that the Marco Spada overture is one of the composer’s most accomplished achievements in that form must carry some weight. The performance here is, once again, a delight, right up there with Richard Bonynge’s expertly delivered account with the London Symphony Orchestra (Decca Eloquence 482 7730) in conveying the work’s succession of tuneful melodies with a hefty and welcome dollop or two of engaging theatricality.
Auber’s 1857 Marco Spada ballet was famous in its time for two particular features. The first was the spectacular use of machinery in the final Act, whereby a fully-populated stage was raised into the air mid-performance to expose a subterranean bandits’ lair. The second was the unusual decision to cast two famous ballerinas in leading roles and to market the productionas a battle between them for artistic supremacy. The pas de Mme Rosati was a dance solo composed especially for Carolina Rosati, usually judged to be the more convincing actress of the rival pair. Unfortunately, she was probably the less impressive dancer, for it was observed that some of the more energetic sequences seemed to leave the somewhat generously proportioned lady rather out of breath. Perhaps Auber was bearing that consideration in mind when he composed Mme Rosati’s pas, for it’s certainly nothing too complex or taxing in terms of its music. It is, nevertheless, a successful number thanks to its particularly catchy main tune that’s repeated over and over again. It is, indeed, the epitome of those melodies that Auber was prone to reuse, often in entirely unchanged form, in other works – as, in this case, he actually did. Listening to it in this performance, you can easily see why.
Eight years ago I reviewed a disc that included the world premiere recording of Auber’s Jenny Bell overture. That was the opening track of an enjoyable CD entitled François Auber – ouvertures et ballets rares, performed by the Gothenburg Opera Orchestra under B. Tommy Andersson (Sterling CDS-1039-2). Listening to that disc alongside this new one conducted by Dario Salvi is an interesting experience. Mr Andersson’sadopts a traditional “big band” approach that is emphasised even more by a resonant, but not unattractive, acoustic. His account of Jenny Bell could thus have comfortably been included in one of those mid-20th century collections of overtures that I mentioned earlier. Mr Salvi, on the other hand eschews dense textures and emphasises, instead, orchestral clarity, agility and precision, thereby allowing him to bring out the score’s internal variety rather more than his Scandinavian counterpart. Once again, the engineering plays a significant part, in that the somewhat drier, less reverberant acoustic of the Naxos release reveals more of what’s going on under the musical surface. While I really enjoyed both accounts, Salvi’s approach to the score feels, I think, the more authentic one.
Throughout this ongoing series, Dario Salvi has offered some revelatory accounts of comparatively familiar music, thrown light on scores that will have hitherto been completely unknown to many of us and, in general, expanded our knowledge and appreciation of Auber’s output and significance. As such, it is hardly surprising to find Overtures vol. 7 concluding with something that’s a little unusual – if not a downright oddity. It’s Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1889 arrangement of the same Le cheval de bronze overture that opened the disc. It appears that Humperdinck thought that Auber’s whole opera needed bringing up to date if it were to appeal to audiences more than five decades after its original composition. The addition of extra instruments and some extensive elaboration of the score has the effect, as Mr Letellier suggests, of “altering, even blunting the crisp directness and rhythmic impulse of Auber’s very precise musical language”. The inclusion of both the original version and the later modified one gives us the opportunity to compare and contrast them. I suspect that many listeners – of whom I am certainly one – will prefer the earlier, sparer style of composition.
This welcome new disc once again showcases the skilful musicians of the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava who also did the honours in Volume 5 of this series (though on that occasion they were billed as the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra). Dario Salvi continues to lead his forces, however they’re named, with clearly evident enthusiasm for Auber’s cause and with a finely honed appreciation of the composer’s style. First-rate sound quality is merely the icing on the cake of this welcome new release.
Rob Maynard
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Contents
Le cheval de bronze, opéra féerie AWV 25 (1835)– overture
Le cheval de bronze, opera-ballet AWV 47 (1857) – Act 1 Pas de quatre*
Le cheval de bronze, opera-ballet AWV 47 (1857) – Act 3 Danse*
Le cheval de bronze, opera-ballet AWV 47 (1857)– Act 4 Pas de deux*
Le lac des fées, grand opera AWV 32 (1839)– overture
Le lac des fées, grand opera AWV 32 (1839)– Act 3 Marche des rois*
Le lac des fées, grand opera AWV 32 (1839)– Act 3 Valse des étudiants*
Marco Spada, opéra-comique AWV 43 (1852)– overture
Marco Spada, ballet AWV 46(1857) – Act 3 Pas de Mme Rosati
Jenny Bell, opéra-comique AWV 44 (1855)– overture
Das eherne Pferd (Le cheval de bronze AWV 25, arr. Engelbert Humperdinck) (1889) – overture*
* premiere recording
