Varèse reviews

French-born, British-trained Ludovic Morlot is one to watch: he’s the dedicatee of Elliott Carter’s final work, Instances, no less. This programme, though, is better in theory than practice: two responses to the new world, indeed, but musically indigestible.

New recordings of Berlioz’s neurotic self-exploration are coming thick and fast, but this one doesn’t need its unusual coupling to stand out. Mariss Jansons’s interpretation is distinctive enough to stand alone on this disc, which captures the immediacy of a live performance by the excellent Munich orchestra in vividly recorded sound. This is a big reading, spacious and detailed, but one that emphasises the unease underlying even the most lyrical passages.

As in his previous Varèse collection, Nagano overplays the Gallic finesse – a real and neglected aspect of the music, but not one that should neutralise its visionary viscerality. Combined with Erato’s admirably clear recording the result is sometimes lightweight, but Intégrales emerges as a score of positively Mozartian Classicism. The triumphs, though, are the compellingly nightmarish Nocturnal, far outclassing the only previous version (Abravanel’s 1968 Vanguard recording) and a superbly plangent Déserts, the best yet on disc.

As in his previous Varèse collection, Nagano overplays the Gallic finesse – a real and neglected aspect of the music, but not one that should neutralise its visionary viscerality. Combined with Erato’s admirably clear recording the result is sometimes lightweight, but Intégrales emerges as a score of positively Mozartian Classicism. The triumphs, though, are the compellingly nightmarish Nocturnal, far outclassing the only previous version (Abravanel’s 1968 Vanguard recording) and a superbly plangent Déserts, the best yet on disc.

With his 1994 recording of Arcana, Chailly established his credentials as a doughty champion of Varèse. He now emerges as the foremost interpreter with this ‘complete works’, bringing together that performance with brand new ones of the rest of his output. It lacks Étude pour espace, unheard since 1947, and the electronic film score, Verges, but it’s still the ‘most complete’ ever.

The whole of Varèse’s surviving output can be comfortably accommodated on a pair of CDs, as it is in Riccardo Chailly’s superlative survey on Decca, but Pierre Boulez’s single disc concentrates on the two orchestral works that Varèse wrote in the years after he emigrated to the United States in 1915, Amériques and Arcana.

The whole of Varèse’s surviving output can be comfortably accommodated on a pair of CDs, as it is in Riccardo Chailly’s superlative survey on Decca, but Pierre Boulez’s single disc concentrates on the two orchestral works that Varèse wrote in the years after he emigrated to the United States in 1915, Amériques and Arcana.