Fernande Decruck (1896-1954)
Concertante Works Volume 2
Cello Concerto (1932)
Les Trianons (1946)
Sonata for Viola (or Alto Saxophone) and orchestra (1943)
Les clochers de Vienne; Suite de Valses (1935)
Jeremy Crosmer (cello), Mitsuru Kubo (viola), Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)
Jackson Symphony Orchestra/Matthew Aubin
rec. 2023, Harold Sheffer Music Hall, Jackson, USA
Claves 50-3108 [64]

The review of the first volume in this series (review) includes a useful and brief biography of Fernande Decruck, the French composer best-known for her Sonata for Alto Saxophone or Viola. In Claves’ earlier disc it was performed on the Saxophone in its orchestral guise, a less commonly encountered version: you’ll find several recordings for Saxophone and piano, or indeed Viola and piano.

In this second volume it’s performed by violist Mitsuru Kubo with, once again, the Jackson Symphony Orchestra directed by Matthew Aubin. It’s good to hear the richer coloration of the viola in this performance which allows Decruck’s nuanced orchestral writing – a compound of romantic drama, impressionistic textures and pastoral affiliations – to emerge so eloquently. It’s a four-movement Sonata, with an ‘antique’ French Christmas melody at the heart of its Noël movement, and an ebulliently coloured and pirouetting Fileuse functioning as a Scherzo. This was the one movement recorded by the work’s dedicatee, Marcel Mule. The melancholically reflective and somewhat Ravel-like Nocturne of the finale, especially well suited to the viola’s plangent coloration, gives way to an ebullient Rondel.   

Though it’s possible that you may have come across the Sonata before, you’d be doing well if you know the Cello Concerto of 1932, the earliest work in this selection, played here by Jeremy Crosmer. Decruck deals with the balancing issues by constructing the most delicate and lyric orchestral tapestry, music of chamber-scaled refinement into which the cello’s cadenza – which occurs just four minutes into the first movement – comes as something of an unearned shock. Nevertheless, gentleness is the predominant feature of the work, the cello a collaborator rather than a protagonist, as deft winds irradiate the central Adagietto drawing from the cello a greater quotient of lyric, non-virtuosic animation. Decruck increases the sonority in the finale through canny employment of the percussion and fugal incidents. Her piquant sonorities give the music a charming, unserious profile.

Les Trianons is a suite for harpsichord – Mahan Esfahani, luxury casting – and orchestra, though like the Sonata there’s an option to use the piano instead. It was composed in 1946 and named after a building in Versailles and is broadly neo-classical but again informed by Decruck’s very painterly and spicy use of colour. The opening movement is somewhat reminiscent of Walter Leigh’s Harpsichord Concertino of 1934 in its crispness and tangy vitality. The slow movement again shows her predilection for using wind tracery, as well as embodying a certain chic yet apt use of colour to produce a dreamlike atmosphere full of sinuous silences. The syncopated finale is exciting and warmly textured.

The final work is a suite of waltzes called Les clochers de Vienne, in which you will hear the decidedly unorthodox use of the vibraphone – one of the instrument’s earliest appearances in orchestral music. It’s a delightful set whose intention is entertainment, though it’s not, in all honesty, especially distinctive.

These are all claimed to be world premiere recordings. In the case of the Sonata, that would mean a premiere in this orchestral viola version. All the soloists play with flair and engagement and the Jackson Symphony acquits itself well, Aubin directing with awareness of the modest emotional parameters of Decruck’s music. The recording has been aptly judged too and the conductor’s notes are helpfully to the point.

Jonathan Woolf   

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