This munificent collection has the air of a challenge thrown down with all the panache that comes of knowing that no-one else can match it. It's the sort of thing you can do when you are EMI. The competition just don't have the catalogue depth to match it. OK so they might have a few more recent recordings but in terms of still very good sounding analogue this is the business and at superbudget price.
Ibert had his frivolous ’twenties moments but for the rest he is a pleasing melodist with a fastidious and effective ear for orchestral effect.
I have known most of these recordings from having started exploring Ibert on LP during the period 1971-78. The covers of those albums are engraved in my memory.
His Divertissement is drawn from his incidental music for a production of a Goldoni play The Italian Straw Hat. It is an excuse for a brilliant weave of parody and display. The echoes here are largely of absurdist Satie, of Ravel's Ma Mère l'Oye in Cortege, of Prokofiev in parade and in the tempo di galop of the then 'madmen' of music such as Antheil, Ornstein and Cowell. Frémaux and the CBSO give this work a rowdy outing.
The Symphonie Marine was not played during Ibert’s life and only achieved performance one year after his death. There is no swelling oceanic sweep here; sketched in suggestions are the order of the day. It's a work that in its freshness and intricacy of detail fascinates. The supercharged whooping cascading effusions of Bacchanale are bound to impress but don't I recall another even more animalistic recording by Bernstein and the L'ORTF also on EMI? Written for the tenth anniversary of the BBC Third Programme, it's a superb riotous showpiece; rather the equivalent of Szymanowski's early Concert Overture and the first movement of Enescu's First Symphony.
Like the Symphonie Marine solo lines emerge repeatedly in the almost equally exuberant Louisville Concerto - so designated despite running only to concert overture length. It's clearly another successful artefact of Louisville's philanthropic scheme to put the city on the cultural map internationally - which the scheme did. Such a pity that First Edition CDs are no longer around to perpetuate the legacy.
Rather predictably the active and restless Bostoniana was a Charles Munch Tanglewood commission - in fact what they asked for was a symphony. Ibert died before going any further than this single movement which at times finds echo in Hindemith's big symphonies. The Tropismes was also not performed until after Ibert's death. It is in nine sections though here inconveniently in a single 25 minute track. It might have been intended as a ballet. The big piercingly searching and surging string writing of Bostoniana is also on show here but with a sultry swooning harmonic world which takes Ibert one romantically fevered pace towards Scriabin. It ends with a sequence of piled high superheated grandiloquent fanfares.
The Flute Concerto was written for Marcel Moyse and is flighty, suave and cool with a wondrously tender Andante and with an unusually long and brusque Allegro scherzando which seems to look back to the absurdist uproar of Divertissement. Like Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (and which other works I wonder?) Ouverture de Fetes was written for the 2500th anniversary of the Mikado's dynasty in Japan. It was premiered in 1942 having weathered the backwash from Japan's part in the war. It includes a fugal episode and is quite a weighty effort running to more than fifteen active and celebratory minutes. Nothing struck me as especially oriental about it.
Back to more familiar waters with the superlative suite Escales (Ports of Call). It is a most audacious and achieved series of pictures of the cultures looking out or from the Mediterranean littoral. These are lovely recordings with some truly beautiful impressionistic writing. While Divertissement bids fair to be his most instantly recognisable piece this is the one that deserves concert hall attention. The Tunis movement recalls Holst's Beni Mora in its evocation of the shadowed streets of the old city. The final Valencia is eager and bright with excitement and tickles the ear with some wonderful distanced Hispanic effects including the castanets and tambourines as well as the rapturously explosive Rhapsodie Espagnole style whoops in the final few moments.
The Don Quichotte songs have a related Iberian resonance. The songs are to words (not in the booklet) by Ronsard and Arnoux. The words are delivered with pleasing clarity so some French speakers should be able to follow the plot easily enough. The orchestral contribution is spare and well judged with guitar, harp, harpsichord, bassoon and oboe playing leading parts in establishing the Iberian milieu. But then we know from the Valencia movement of Escales that Ibert had all the right Spanish credentials. Well worth exploring if you have a predilection for economically scored and colour-soaked Hispanica.
A good concise note by Richard Langham Smith.
Interested in Ibert? Sorted.
Rob Barnett
see also review by Hubert Culot
As can be seen from the above details, all these recordings have been available before, some of them dating back to the LP era. Some have already been re-issued in CD format several years ago and have since disappeared from the catalogue so this compilation at bargain price is most welcome.
Ibert was a most distinguished craftsman whose music has great melodic and instrumental charm, although it rarely plumbs any great depths. The celebrated and ubiquitous Flute Concerto is now a classic avidly seized upon by flautists all over the world. It perfectly exemplifies both Ibert’s strengths and weaknesses. The music is superbly crafted, gratefully written for the instrument and overflows with sparkling orchestration and memorable melodic material. On the other hand, Ibert’s musical ideas are most of the time rather short-winded and do not lend themselves to any significant development, although the composer always uses his limited material most resourcefully. One of the finest examples of Ibert’s ability to work-out satisfying musical structures from tiny material is to be found in his Trois piècesbrèves for wind quintet (1930), now another classic of the repertoire for wind quintet.
Louis Frémaux must have been one of the first conductors to investigate further into Ibert’s output. His recordings made in Birmingham, as far back as 1973 and 1975, provided a welcome opportunity to hear other works besides the best-known and much loved Divertissement. The scoring for small orchestra, actually a sort of pit orchestra, betrays the origin of the piece as incidental music for a revival of Labiche’s comedy Un chapeau de pailled’Italie. The music is light-hearted, often gently ironic as in the light parody of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March in the second movement, full of dance rhythms and some ‘surprises’ such as the modern-sounding “wrong-note” music of the short piano cadenza opening the otherwise riotous Finale. In this delightful piece, Ibert proves himself another non-official member of Les Six, and the heir to Poulenc and Milhaud. The somewhat earlier Escales, too, is fairly well-known. This colourful travelogue around the Mediterranean Sea has been repeatedly recorded, by Stokowski amongst many others. It, too, is a good example of Ibert’s music-making: colourful, superbly scored, never outstaying its welcome, although it is not completely free of clichés and quickly forgotten ideas. It nevertheless remains a very attractive and enjoyable piece. Ibert forbade performances of his Symphonie marine during his lifetime. It is not clear why he did so, neither do we know exactly what the music is about. As the present annotator rightly remarks, Ibert’s “view of the sea has nothing of the flashing colours of Debussy’s LaMer”. Indeed, the music of this fairly concise work is sustained throughout its duration by a tugging rhythm rather suggesting The Toilers of the Sea than the great seascapes of Debussy’s work or of Frank Bridge’s The Sea or the much later Sea Interludes of Britten. The explanation lies in the fact that this work might either be the score written for a short film S.O.S. Foch or based on that music. I have never seen that film and cannot tell you anything about it that might shed interesting light on this rather neglected score. Here, however, the serious side of Ibert’s music-making can be better appreciated. Louisville Concerto (1953) and Bacchanale (1956) were written on commission, the former as part of the Louisville Orchestra’s courageous scheme of commissioning works from living composers from quite different geographical and musical horizons. The latter was commissioned by the BBC to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme. The music of the Louisville Concerto sometimes has echoes of Americana and may bring Copland and Roy Harris to mind. Bacchanale, on the other hand, is a short nervous, brilliantly scored Scherzo with a calmer central section. Both may be occasional works but they are nevertheless well worth hearing. Bostoniana, actually Ibert’s last work, is the only surviving movement of a symphony commissioned by Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra but left incomplete. This short symphonic movement may be the real surprise in this compilation of Ibert’s orchestral output, for it has a muscular and forceful energy reminiscent of the composer’s great friend Arthur Honegger. It amply shows that Ibert was also capable of great things.
Very little is known about Tropismes pour les amours imaginaires, incidentally the longest work here. It may have been conceived as a ballet score but was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. What comes clearly through is the dance-like character of much of the music, sometimes nodding towards Gershwin. It may be a bit too long and repetitive, but again it is well worth more than the occasional hearing. Ouverture de fête, first performed by Charles Munch in 1942, is another curiosity. It was composed to mark the 2500th anniversary of the Mikado’s dynasty in Japan, as was Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem. Ibert’s overture is completely different from Britten’s work, both in form and content. Ibert composed a fairly substantial celebratory piece closer to Walton’s coronation marches, but with considerably less panache. The piece, however, perfectly suited the occasion.
The final work in this release is one of the finest. It is less well-known than Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, incidentally composed for and not used in the same film by Pabst starring Chaliapin himself in the title role. Ibert’s Quatre Chansons may be less sophisticated than the Ravel but these songs are nevertheless really very fine, effective and at times deeply moving for all their utter simplicity.
Jacques Ibert is often regarded as un petit maître, but his music is always refreshingly unpretentious, often attractive and rewarding for all its strengths and weaknesses. It certainly possesses a direct appeal that is hard to resist. This re-issue is perfectly justified and most welcome especially when the music is played with taste and loving care as it is here.
Hubert Culot
Concert Program Notes
Ibert Flute Concerto Imslp
- The celebrated and ubiquitous Flute Concerto is now a classic avidly seized upon by flautists all over the world. It perfectly exemplifies both Ibert’s strengths and weaknesses. It perfectly exemplifies both Ibert’s strengths and weaknesses.
- Jacques Ibert Biography. And Faure, among others. His studies were interrupted by World War I. He was drafted into the French Navy. And chamber works for wind ensembles. His Flute Concerto is a standard in the flute repertory. Ibert's music displays a personality of its own, which deliberately does not follow any contemporary school.
- Ibert Entr' Acte. Faure 'Dolly' Berceuse / Sicili. Notes coming in sequence only becuase the last one was finished. And the fiendishly difficult transcription.
- These white cover albums have consistently thorough liner notes with fine quality discs stored in durable plastic-lined sleeves. Highlight, or weakest of this program, depending on your liking of modern music, is Jean-Michal Damase's Sonata. Performers are Jean-Pierre Rampal (flute) and Lily Laskine (harp). Both were natives of France.