For their latest album, Neeme Järvi and his Estonian National Symphony Orchestra present a delightful programme of lesser-known stage music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Overtures by Thomas, Auber and Boieldieu were all composed for works staged at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and are wonderful examples of the period.
Lalo considered himself to be first and foremost an opera composer, even though Le Roi d’Ys was his only opera to be performed in his lifetime. He is now best known for his symphonic and chamber music, largely because of the highly political musical establishment in France in his time. The Overture to the opera (which opens this album) is now the best-known music from the piece, which proved a considerable success in France.
Poulenc's Stabat Mater, which the composer described as, "a requiem without despair," was written in 1950 following the death of Christian Berard, a leading figure of 1940s Paris who designed the sets for Cocteau's films and plays. This masterly work, dedicated to the Virgin of Rocamadour, gives pride of place to the chorus and clearly shows its line of descent from the French motets of the age of Louis XIV. It is paired with the Sept Repons de Tenebres, Poulenc's last choral work. Although sacred in nature, it was written for a non-religious celebration, the opening of New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. This recording's superb cast features soprano Carolyn Sampson and the Estonian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra led by Daniel Reuss.
Though he was born on the Swedish island of Gotland, Englund settled in Helsinki, where he studied and later, after a spell of study in Tanglewood with Copland, taught. On returning home after his service on the front in 1945, he burned all his wartime manuscripts and sketches, and wrote this symphony, his first orchestral piece—and a remarkably accomplished piece it is! It became known in his native country as the War Symphony, though the composer characterized it as an expression of ''a euphoric joy at having—by a sheer miracle—come through four years of hell during the Second World War alive''. The musical language has more in common with Shostakovich than any other modern composer, but it is far from derivative. The idiom is accessible and there are memorable melodic ideas.