Honegger Karayan

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime - he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwangler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part ofthe music scene.

My first encounter on disc with Baiba Skride took the form of her highly impressive recording of the Brahms Concerto. Here she essays vastly different music in the shape of two important twentieth-century concertos for her instrument. Stravinsky’s neo-classical concerto receives a keenly alert reading – from the orchestra as well as from the soloist. The musicians impart an appropriate tang to the music in the opening Toccata. I found the performance of the third movement, Aria II, particularly engaging; Miss Skride’s tone is lovely hereabouts.

Arthur Honegger's 1935 composition Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake) is a rather curious work: an oratorio for adult choir, children's choirs, singers, and several speakers, including one portraying Joan herself. It is like a hybrid of oratorio, melodrama, and film music, which was a fundamental influence on Honegger's style during this period, and it is immensely enjoyable if performed by confident and enthusiastic forces.

Though their national heritages differed as widely as their musical backgrounds and mature musical language, contemporaries Martinu, Hindemith, and Honegger each turned their backs on the highly popular and influential serial movement and blazed their own paths.

The violin and cello duo cannot be considered as a musical rarity; yet it is also far from one of the most popular instrumental combinations in Western classical music. It is a challenging ensemble for both those composing for it and those venturing in the performance of its repertoire. It is a duo which invites counterpoint: the deep nature of both instruments and their vocation is to melodic singing, to the sustained lines which translate the human being’s aspiration to vocality into instrumental music. In consequence, to undertake a composition for violin and cello duo is also to implicitly accept the challenge of polyphony, and to affirm one’s mastery of its most intricate secrets.

In the first three symphonies, Honegger's seriousness is communicated through rhythmically propelled melodies, biting dissonances, and vigorous counterpoint, and his block-like orchestration is calculated more for impact than for nuance. Honegger alternates between muscular developments and searching meditations, and the combative Symphony No. 1 and the uneasy Symphony No. 2 effectively play off these contrasts. A reverent tone dominates the Symphony No. 3, for orchestra, "Liturgique," but its religious feeling is born of doubt and conflict, as conveyed in the work's brutal episodes. This disc restores to the catalog the fine recordings made by Michel Plasson and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse from 1977 to 1979, digitally mastered in 1992.