Jour de Fête Holiday (1949)

The Orchestre de Paris is a French orchestra based in Paris. The orchestra currently performs most of its concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris.

Debussy began composing La Mer in 1904, in Burgundy, but as he wrote to fellow composer André Messager, his memories of the sea were “worth more than a reality whose charm generally weighs too heavily on the imagination”. He continued to work on the score, however, while staying in Jersey, and then in Dieppe. For Debussy, even less than for the Beethoven of the “Pastoral” Symphony, writing about nature does not mean naïvelyimitating it by portraying the elements or the meteorological phenomena that animate them; descriptive music suits neither the flexibility of his music nor his creative temperament. Instead, he invents, he responds to nature through his art, setting up something else in contrast to it.

At long last, Jean Martinon's classic EMI Debussy and Ravel cycles from the 1970s have been gathered in a space-saving box set. If you love this repertoire, you'll gasp with joy at the conductor's crystal-clear orchestral balances, which truly reproduce what you see in the printed music. If you respond to a lean, sinewy approach to this repertoire in the manner of Toscanini and Boulez, but pine for the timbral characteristics that used to distinguish French orchestras (silver-coated strings, tart woodwinds, and slightly watery brass) in gorgeous, vibrant sonics, Martinon's your man. Aldo Ciccolini's crisp, diamond-edged finger work stands out in Ravel's two piano concertos and in Debussy's rarely heard Fantasie. The young Itzhak Perlman's dazzling, effortless traversal of Ravel's Tzigane will humble many an aspiring fiddler. And you won't find a more sparkling, translucent Ravel Mother Goose Suite on record. Martinon was a marvel, and a sadly underrated podium giant.

–Jed Distler

La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti, set to a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard. It was first performed on 11 February 1840 by the Paris Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse.

Ernest Chausson’s death in 1899 in a bicycle accident robbed French music of a major talent. Almost his entire orchestral output fits on this extremely fine CD. Yan Pascal Tortelier’s performance of the richly romantic Symphony is the best since Munch’s Boston Symphony recording. Like Munch, Tortelier knows how to keep the music moving along–he’s only an insignificant two minutes slower than Munch for the whole work–without overindulging the more luscious moments, which in Chausson’s opulent setting really do take care of themselves. Even better, rather than some overplayed encore piece by another composer, the symphony is coupled with two very attractive, rarely heard tone poems and two charming orchestral excerpts from the composer’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The orchestra plays with conviction, Chandos’ sonics are gorgeous, and if you don’t buy this disc, you’re missing out on some marvelous stuff.

Miles Davis & Tadd Dameron - In Paris Festival International De Jazz, May 1949 (1991) {Sony Music Japan SRCS 5695}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 92 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 90 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 23 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1949, 1991 CBS / Sony Music Japan | SRCS 5695
Jazz / Bebop / Trumpet / Piano

Miles Davis was best-known during the late '40s for offering an alternative approach to trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, emphasizing his middle register, a softer tone and a more thoughtful approach. This concert performance, which was not released until nearly three decades later, shows that Davis was just as capable of playing hard-driving bebop as most of his contemporaries. In a quintet with tenor-saxophonist James Moody and pianist-composer Tadd Dameron, Davis confounded the French audience by playing very impressive high notes and displaying an extroverted personality. Never content to merely satisfy the expectations of his fans, he was already moving in surprising directions. This LP also gives one a very rare opportunity to hear Miles Davis verbally introducing songs in a voice not yet scarred.