| Auber La muette de Portici – Overture b. |
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| Cherubini Anacreon – Overture b. Lamoureux Orchestra / Igor Markevitch. |
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| DG The Originals (Mid price) (CD) 447 406-2GOR (71 min-utes: ADD). Item marked a from SLPM138712 (1/62), b new to UK. |
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Markevitch's Symphonie fantastique is in many ways an attractive reading, with a hauntingly grey mood hanging over the "Scene aux champs" and beautifully crisp rhythms, of a kind that French orchestras can produce so well, in the "Marche au supplice". Not everything works so successfully. On its first statement, Markevitch plays the idee fixe with a strange hauling back of the tempo in the middle, and there are other places, including in the rather leaden-footed playing of the Ball, where rubato seems oddly applied. The very opening is extremely slow, but well sustained and suggestive in atmosphere. The actual sound is also rather variable, for most of the time perfectly acceptable for its time and place, but testing the systems a bit at the climaxes in the last two movements. The two overtures are well worth reviving. Berlioz might not have liked to be associated with Cherubini, but he approved of Auber's epoch-making work: he owed much to both composers. This is scarcely a 'competitive' version of his symphony, but those who admired Markevitch's refined, intense music-making will respond to this souvenir of a remarkable musician.
JW