Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
Overtures:
Orchestre National de Lille/Darrell Ang
rec. March 2016, Nouveau Siècle, Lille
Naxos 8.573694 [65]
The overture to Orphée aux enfers — the familiar potpourri arranged for Vienna, not the composer’s shorter pastoral prelude — immediately tells us what we need to know. After a forthright opening tutti, the clarinet solo is unusually fluent, even dashing. Darrell Ang doesn’t let the woodwind-based section dawdle, and the more turbulent music follows without the customary unmarked pause. The solo violin’s waltz — Orpheus’s theme in the opera — slightly quicker than usual, gains a nice lift. The can-can, fast but not unreasonable, heads to a satisfying finish. You wonder why we don’t get more such collections.
A few tracks later, the overture to La Belle Hélène — probably the best known after Orphée — hints at why. It includes all the right bits: a bright-eyed, perky galop to both start and end; the requisite Beautiful Waltz, here a bit tight and uninflected; a contrasting pastoral episode or two. But, overall, it leaves little impression, despite a rousing finish. Only the charming, rocking passage from the “Evohé” song lingers in the mind afterwards.
And there we can see the potential hazard. The same tropes and devices crop up throughout the program: rousing duple-meter tuttis; delicate, detached woodwind writing; gracious waltzes, deployed in varied combinations and juxtapositions. The risk, over the length of the program, is that, even where the music is “new,” the process should become predictable.
Fortunately, most of these pieces are more substantial than La Belle Hélène — if not quite as elaborate and sophisticated as Orphée — and Offenbach’s fertile melodic gift and skillful contrasts keep everything in motion. He’s particularly good with 6/8 time. The sprightly pizzicatos of Vert-Vert are answered by unexpectedly solemn horn chorales; a more deliberate later passage plays effectively with cross-relations. Monsieur et Madame Denis launches with a hearty cavalry charge, contrasted with a slower, plaintive duple. The relatively brief Grande-Duchesse overture opens with a fanfare-like tutti — rather a lot of drum there — and its pastoral waltz is interrupted by what’s almost the William Tell brass call!
The program concludes with a concert overture of Offenbach’s youth. Much of the material is more spacious than in the operetta curtain-raisers; at nearly thirteen minutes, there’s time for a more patient, concentrated unfolding. It all sounds very good and very well put together. I just couldn’t escape a nagging sense that the composer hadn’t quite mastered the art of the transition: I kept thinking they were all a few bars too long, though the progressions are smooth enough.
Darrell Ang’s straightforward presentation, as suggested, is a treat. There are a few insecure moments: the final waltz of L’île de Tulipatan isn’t immediately clear as such; the transition to Vert-Vert‘s tutti recap sounds a bit clumsy; and the players sound distinctly uneasy in the more exposed textures of the concert overture. But, mostly, he draws alert, well-balanced sounds from the Lille players, who sound like they’re having a ball. Collectors will find Ang’s no-nonsense Orphée a nice foil to more demonstrative versions like Bernstein’s (Sony).
The sound is good, with pleasing depth in the brass choir. Initially, I heard a slight edge in tutti, but perhaps it went away, or perhaps I got used to it.
Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog
Previous reviews: Dan Morgan (November 2017) ~ Nick Barnard (January 2018)
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Contents (Overtures)
Orphée aux enfers (1860, arr. Binder and Busch)
La Fille du tambour-major (1879)
L’île de Tulipatan (1868)
Monsieur et Madame Denis (1862)
La Belle Hélène (1864)
Vert-Vert, ‘Kakadu’ (1869, arr. F. Hoffman)
La Vie parisienne (1865)
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867)
Ouverture à grand orchestre (1843)
