FAURÉ: Shylock, Op. 57. Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 87. Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11. Requiem, Op. 48. (Henri Legay, tenor; Françoise Ogéas, soprano; Bernard Demigny, baritone; J. Baudry-Godard, organ; French National Radio Chorus.
TESTAMENT SBT 1266 (F) (ADD) TT:  71:36

BERLIOZ:  Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9  Excerpts from The Damnation of Faust. (London Philharmonic Orch); BIZET:  Excerpts from Carmen.  DELIBES:  Excerpts from Lakme.  RAVEL:  Une Barque sur l'ocean.  Rapsodie espagnole
TESTAMENT SBT 1265 (F) (ADD) TT:  66:17

At least two years ago I reviewed six discs of Debussy's music, inseparably boxed, conducted during the last few years of his long life by Dèsirè-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880-1965). This younger contemporary of globe-trotting Pierre Monteux and Paul Paray devoted his professional life to music-making in Paris. A live 1962 performance of Pelléas et Mélisande in stereo was the prize—one of the two great ones on discs, along with Roger Desormière's (despite the seduction of Karajan and the fastidious deliniation of Abbado). Those Debussy performances published by Montaigne Archives on its oddly-named naïve label were not, evidently, among the many recordings Inghelbrecht made for the French firm of Ducretet Thomson—including these three additional monodiscs copyrighted by EMI Music France, digitally remastered as well as published by Testament, but nonetheless of DT origin.

For me, the prize here is a visceral albeit cultivated, concert-oriented (rather than balletic) performance of Ravel's complete Daphnis et Chloé, coupled with the six-movement version of Ma mère l'oye (leaving out Ravel's interludes between each of the original suite's five movements). The latter is lovely, although you will not hear an orchestra as polished, say, as Charles Dutoit's Montréal Symphony. But you will hear a distinctive personality informed by rock-solid musicianship (sorry, but I've heard little from Dutoit over the years that I want to hear again except for the Saint-Saëns piano concerto collaboration with Pascal Rogé; for me, he's the Swiss Neeme Järvi). In Inghelbrecht's case, however, the real problem here is acoustic. Whereas his Montaigne Debussy set originated in the French National Radio Orchestra's concert-hall home, le Théâtre de Champs Elysées, these discs were made in Théâtre Apollo, an altogether dryer locale acoustically - everything, that is, except the Fauré Requiem, which was recorded in the Church of Saint-Roch at Paris. In this entire Testament series, the producer was "inconnu" - unknown - although the engineer throughout was André Charlin of the Champs-Elysées staff.

The Fauré includes Henri Legay as tenor soloist in two of the six excerpts from Shylock, which Inghelbrecht recreated with great tenderness. In 1954 the singer was in his lyric prime; veteran opera collectors will remember him from EMI's Pearl Fishers and Massenet's Manon (which Monteux conducted). Françoise Ogéas was Yniold in Inghelbrecht's Pelléas as well as the child in Lorin Maazel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (still unbettered all these years later). But her soprano sounds childlike in the Requiem; better to have used a boy or a more mature voice, although France was not rich during that period (EMI brought in Victoria de los Angeles for their version; but also Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who sounded stilted compared to Inghelbrecht's Bernard Domigny, a veteran seasoned in the nuances of French style). The Radio chorus in the Requiem also sings in Cantique de Jean Racine, early Fauré but already distinctive, and their "Frenchness" is emphasized in the more cramped acoustic of an "inconnu" venue. It is furthermore refreshing to hear instruments with an authentic French timbre in the Pelléas Suite that Charles Koechlin scored for his master (albeit overseen, and copied by Fauré himself for publication). This is not the wispy music-making one usually hears in this work; Fauré wasn't Debussy, and Inghelbrecht underscores his "pre-Impressionist" musical rhetoric.

This leaves a mixed bag which begins with Berlioz, played by the touring London Philharmonic on a day off in Paris. Inghelbrecht was not by nature flamboyant and while nothing sounds limp-wristed, a lot of contemporaries led Berlioz more vividly. However, the Prelude and three Entr'actes from Carmen with his own orchestra are vivid as well as straightforward. A surprise is the music from Lakmè, caressed as affectionately as Shylock on the Fauré disc, with a chorus in the coda as originally written. If there's a rough-hewn Ravel Barque on a stormy ocean next, Rapsodie espagnole takes us back to the agogic subtleties of his all-Ravel disc. "Prélude â la nuit" is the work of an authentic Ravel interpreter, while the rest is a trove of finely shaped detail. What we have of caliber and authority from this too-little-known compatriot of widely-traveled French podium personages should arouse curiosity as well as admiration.

R.D. (October 2002)