Massenet orchestral works from Naxos

[Mark Thomas]

New next month from Naxos is a welcome CD featuring some intriguing purely orchestral works by Massenet: the late symphonic poem Visions, the Brumaire and Phèdre overtures and the suites from Les Érinnyes and Espada. Jean-Luc Tingaud conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Details here.

[Revilod]

This is really welcome. I know the operas but this recording brings together a lot of rare orchestral music. Should be a great disc.

[Alan Howe]

Really fine orchestra & conductor too.

[Mark Thomas]

I have everything bar the Brumaire Overture on a rag bag of old recordings, but it will great to have all these works in modern recordings from a quality orchestra.

[TerraEpon]

I believe the only thing I have is the Phedre so very much looking forward to this!

[semloh]

Yes, a very welcome release. I don't think Massenet's orchestral works get much of an airing, which is a pity.

[Alan Howe]

Gorgeous excerpts here:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/visions/hnum/10274262

[MartinH]

Great - this will go nicely with the earlier Naxos released of the suites.

[Mark Thomas]

The excerpts sound absolutely luscious - Massenet can be so seductive.

[Collrec]

As one of the founding members of the Massenet Society American branch back in 1977, I would like to inform our readers that some of the works featured on the subject Naxos release (8.574179) were not complete.

In particular "Phedre" was written by Massenet as "Musique pour le drame de Jean Racine" and in addition to the overture it is actually incidental music containing 5 additional sections titled Sacrifice, Offrande, Marche des Athéniens, Hippolyte et Aricie and Imploration à Neptune. These 21 minutes of selections along with the Symphonic Poem "Visions" were recorded on a 12" LP Cybelia disk (CY 677) back in 1985 by l'Orchestre Philharmonique de l'Etat de Rhénanie-Palatinat conducted by Pierre Stoll which I have in my collection, but they were never released on CD.

Since I am more of a CD collector (I have around 75,000 CDs) than most classical music lovers, I was able to contact a professional LP to CD conversion company to create a cloned CD duplicate with all program notes, front and rear covers and spine edges. The result was a professional looking CD as it would have been created by the manufacturer.

In addition to the missing sections of Phedre there are only 4 selections from the Espada Ballet given which last for about 10 minutes. The original complete ballet contains 10 sections lasting for about 40 minutes. Why Naxos omitted the other 6 sections when they could have issued the complete ballet on a 2 CD set is a mystery. Instead they called it a ballet suite where they should have said a suite from the complete ballet. For those interested, this information was obtained from the Espada Piano-Vocal Score a copy of which is in the Library of the Massenet Society.

Finally and sadly, the live performance and future recording of Massenet's "Bacchus", from the 2020 Massenet Festival, was cancelled according from the information I read on the Internet. No reason was given but it was probably due to the Covid 19 virus. If anybody has any further info about this cancellation, please post it.

[Mark Thomas]

The complete recording of the Phèdre incidental music mentioned by Collrec is on YouTube here, and Visions is on YouTube here. It's a great shame that the Bacchus performance and recording have been cancelled. I believe that it's now the only surviving Massenet opera for which a recording, commercial or "off-air", is not available.

[Matt]

The performance and recording of Bacchus is actually not part of Massenet Festival of Saint-Etienne but of Radio-France Festival in Montpellier. Indeed, it was cancelled because of coronavirus. But it is postponed to July 2021, at the same place, with (maybe) the same interpreters. More information in a few months...

[TerraEpon]

As one of the founding members of the Massenet Society American branch back in 1977, I would like to inform our readers that some of the works featured on the subject Naxos release (8.574179) were not complete.

Does Naxos imply they are in any way? I mean yeah I for one much prefer anything complete but is there any deception with the disc as presented?

[Mark Thomas]

Bacchus ... is postponed to July 2021

Thanks, Matt. That sounds hopeful.

[Justin]

My favorite track is the Entr'acte from Les Érinnyes. I know it is incidental music which has a sense of transition, but it is purely romantic in every sense of the word. Dramatic, poignant at times, and a wonderful theme at the beginning which repeats itself twice more. It reminds me a bit of classical Italian adagios, especially the trills of the strings.