Diskurse Des Alter(n)s

As early as 1761, a year before his masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck largely renewed another musical genre, the ballet, with his adaptation of a work by Molière for Viennese audiences: Don Juan. Another work, Sémiramis, followed a year later. These two works are innovative in that they offer, for the first time, a coherent narrative in which all the resources of the orchestra are put at the service of expressiveness. Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations bring out all the nuances of these scores, reminding us that a quarter of a century before Mozart, the stages of Europe were treated to all the evocative power of music by another outstanding figure: Christoph Willibald Gluck.

'It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject', Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opera in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendes is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

Les deux oeuvres sont des classiques des concerts pour enfants qui connaissent un même succès mon­dial : le conte musical « Pierre et le loup » de Prokofiev et « Le Carnaval des animaux » de Camille Saint-Saëns, que ce dernier a décrit – probablement avec un clin d’oeil – comme une « Grande fantaisie zoologique ». Est-ce que l’essentiel est ainsi dit ? Pas du tout. Car la question se pose de savoir pourquoi les adultes appré­cient autant que les enfants l’histoire du brave Pierre et du méchant loup. Cela a sans doute à voir avec la géniale musique de Prokofiev. Il faut en outre se sou­venir que Saint-Saëns a composé son « Carnaval » pour un concert privé à domicile, c›est-à-dire pour le divertissement d’adultes. Et ces derniers ne pou­vaient apparemment pas se retenir de rire, si bien que le compositeur a soudain pris peur et a strictement interdit la publication de son oeuvre charmante, crai­gnant que ses oeuvres sérieuses ne soient dès lors plus prises au sérieux. D’une certaine façon, on lui a donné raison : en termes de popularité auprès des jeunes et moins jeunes, aucune autre oeuvre de Saint-Saëns ne peut rivaliser avec le « Carnaval des animaux ».

Jordi Savall's exemplary performance of Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks is among the finest available on disc: refined and precise, but very big, with blood-stirring grandeur. This is just the kind of extroverted, rousing presentation that best highlights the music's open-air ceremonial function. Savall's Le Concert des Nations is essentially a chamber orchestra with double or triple winds, but the sound he elicits from the group is majestic and surprisingly powerful. The playing is crisp and the rhythmic articulation bracing, but the sound is never brash. In fact, more often than not it is seductively sensual, a heady integration of precision and supple, shapely phrasing. Handel left no authoritative edition of the score of Water Music and it has traditionally been divided into three suites, but Savall reorders the material into two suites, a decision that makes more sense in terms of key relationships and that sounds entirely satisfying.

In the Revelation of James, an apocryphal gospel that was not included in the Bible, events and details surrounding the birth of Christ are reported that do not appear in the better-known versions of the Christmas story from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. In particular, it portrays very real people, full of emotions and conflicting feelings. Mary, not Jesus, is the focus of the narrative.