Koechlin - Grainger - The Jungle Book

The valuable series of CDs from the enlightened French publishing house Actes Sud is beginning to makes its way beyond France. The notes in the present case are entirely in French with no translations. The jewel box is forgotten for a change and instead, and this is becoming something of a French hallmark, we get a stiff card folder into which the booklet notes are glued and two CD mounting stems on fold-outs. The poems are printed in the booklet - again only in French. The cover and end designs are drawn from details of Henri Rousseau's 'Nègre attaqué par un jaguar'.
It is bizarre to see that this set is sourced from an analogue tape - perhaps a peculiarity of Radio France tape stock or equipment in Montpellier at the time (only four years ago!).
This set is up against forbidding competition in the shape of a BMG double (two CDs for the price of one) - Radio SO, Berlin/Zinman. Segerstam's recording of the Livre (Marco Polo 8.223484, rec. 1985 - a single CD at 72.47) is not directly comparable as it excludes the three vocal movements. Zinman on BMG 74321 84596-2 is an all-digital effort (rec. 1993) which includes all seven movements of the Livre plus James Judd conducting the Seven Stars Symphony (only symphonic in the same strained pictorial sense as Rubinstean's Ocean symphony!) and two slighter works. The BMG is difficult to pass up as a bargain in face of Actes-Sud's two CD set offering only the Livre. The Zinman Livre minus the Seven Stars was previously RCA 09026 61955 2. Zinman presents the tone poems in strict opus number order while both Bedford and Segerstam seems to have given some thought to shaping the seven pieces into a cogent narrative. Of course you can programme the pieces in any order you wish. The sense of rounded cogency comes across very well with the sequence starting with the Loi and ending with the Night movement of La Course de printemps - a pattern followed by Segerstam and Bedford.
Loi de la Jongle: With the tempo of a priestly march and rough-toned brass and imposing tam-tam strokes this music calls up images of some cavernous stone temple festooned in lianas. Bedford is the quickest of the three at 6.40 compared with the 9.51 of Segerstam and 9.14 of Zinman. Bedford does not seem unduly rushed despite shaving one third of the time off the competition.
Les Bandar-Log is about the same length (16 mins) in each of the three versions. Its depiction of the gibbering chaotic monkey race is an opportunity for Koechlin to cock a snook at the then trendiness of the 12-tone school and the atonalists. The depiction of the inarticulate, dysjunct and chattering is preceded by music clearly related to the Loi movement. I was intrigued to hear, among the intimations of ‘modernism’, music that seemed to be the mine from which Messiaen drew inspiration for his Turangalila Symphony (5.15). At the close the music dissolves into a quiet niente in which the orchestra's high violins seem slightly insecure; less so with Zinman’s Berlin orchestra. By comparison with the Actes-Sud, the BMG recording is in noticeably closer perspective and hints of Stravinsky (solo winds from Le Sacre) first caught in wispy form in Loi are now much more concrete. The Segerstam is slightly less well recorded than the Zinman and lacks its consistent animation. The music was written at a time coinciding with the invasion of France and while it lacks overtly tragic overtones I wonder whether any of this laceratingly sardonic music was aimed at the awful pomp of the Wehrmacht. I cannot imagine this music finding favour with the Vichy authorities; its lampooning of ‘degenerate’ styles is a mite too convincing..
The three poems Op. 18 are the earliest works in the cycle. The first two poems include a prominent part for mezzo soprano. Iris Vermillion seems to have cornered the market as she is the singer in both the Actes-Sud and BMG sets. Berceuse Phoque has the sort of quiet cyclical piano filigree you hear in Canteloube over which Vermillion's operatically-fit voice gently undulates in prophecy of Gershwin's Summertime. Although more closely recorded by BMG she is in better voice in the Bedford version - the digital ‘floodlighting’ did not suit her voice quite so well as the analogue treated it in Montpellier. This track has to be a natural for any Classic FM style radio station looking to freshen its playlist. Put it in a similar artlessly lovely category as Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileira No. 5, Rachmaninov''s Vocalise, Sibelius's Luonnotar and any of the more somnolent Canteloube arrangements.
The Chanson de Nuit is a quick and hunted brevity. Here Ralf Lukas (Zinman) is to be preferred over Vincent Le Texier. Lukas is in much better voice and Vermillion seems on top of the role. The downside is that the BMG sound lacks mystery. The long Chant de Kala Nag (the tame elephant who sings from captivity his lament of yearning for the forests) is sung by Jan Botha - a dark toned tenor with a real coffee-baritonal quality and an urgency to his singing. Bedford has the pastel shaded Jacque Trussel and the quickly caught triumphs at 1.50 are better caught in the Bedford version. These three poems date from the turn of the century and are of a decidedly exotic-romantic mode not so very far removed from Delibes and Massenet. The chorus touches in the colours of these three pieces.
After the Op. 18 excursion to the opulent French Orient the Meditation brings us back to 1936. Purun-Bhagat, by the way, is a devout pilgrim once a holder of high power who now contemplates solitary serenity (is it any surprise that this music was written amid the Chamounix mountains?). The work is kith and kin to Delius's Song of the High Hills and Novak's In the Tatras (there are no avant-garde infractions this time). Those long held pp high notes again cause the Montpellier strings some slight strain which is better handled by the Berliners even though they are recorded more analytically - lacking the analogue mystery of the Radio France tape. Both versions link seamlessly back to the Loi and the introduction of Bandar-Log. Segerstam's recording team make a better job of catching the half-lit secrets and serene contemplative leanings of the piece although here too they must give place to Bedford's performance.
The Spring Running (La Course) was written between 1911 and 1929. It is the longest of all seven of the pieces and finishes the Bedford and Segerstam versions: Bedford 29.19 (about 28.12, shorn of applause), Zinman 31.54, Segerstam 31.21. Its mood range encompasses festivity found in Ravel and Markevich, as well as serenity. In this respect Segerstam is less convincing than Bedford. The pell-mell rush reads across to another headlong vernal work of the 1920s: Frank Bridge's Enter Spring (and the second of his Two Jefferies Poems) as well as John Foulds' April-England. The score is in four segments (not separately tracked on Actes-Sud or Marco Polo): Spring in the Forest, Mowgli, The Running, Night. There are discreet parts for organ and piano. This portrayal of the irresistible rush of spring tells of Mowgli's sorrowing departure from forest childhood to manhood and his separation from Bagheera and Baloo. The Running is the last desperate and doomed attempt to drive out from Mowgli's bloodstream the stirrings of adult emotions and inhibition. Segerstam handles this all very well. The feathery analogue gauze of the Bedford set helps with the mystery and his Mowgli is preferable especially to Zinman who eludes the rapturous intensity of abandon found in Bedford and Segerstam.
Allowing for the minor fallibilities of the Montpellier orchestra and of a live concert with audience participation of various sorts, this French analogue version is sensitive and mysterious and has the glorious Ms Vermillion in imperious voice. The BMG double is difficult not to prefer given its generous coupling and studio perfection. If however you are captivated by the Koechlin work you will need to have this Bedford version which is informed by the imaginative energy of a conductor whose sympathy for Kipling's ‘Jungle Book’ has already been amply demonstrated by various concert performances of Percy Grainger's own quite different Jungle Book cycle.

Rob Barnett

Percy Grainger
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Shallow Brown
Jungle Book *
Good-Bye to Love (arr. Alan Gibbs)
Died for Love *
The Power of Love *
The Rival Brothers *
Six Dukes Went Afishin'
The Sprig of Thyme (arr. Dana Paul Perna)
Willow, Willow
Recessional *
Lord Maxwell's Goodnight (arr. David Tall)
The Three Ravens
The Running of Shindand *
Early One Morning (arr. David Tall)
The Love Song of Har Dyal *
My Love's in Germanie *
* CD premières
Libby Crabtree, soprano
Lesley Jane Rogers, soprano
John Mark Ainsley, tenor
James Gilchrist, tenor
David Wilson-Johnson, baritone
Polyphony
The Polyphony Orchestra/Stephen Layton
Hyperion 1998

After years of neglect, Grainger's music seems finally to come into its own. For those of you drawn to British music, give Grainger a try. He sounds like nobody else, and his music alternately jumps with raw physical energy and pines with great longing and sweetness. He packs his pieces full of surprises. Very few go on longer than 6 minutes, so if you don't like a work, something else will come along shortly. Some of the works repeat other discs, but a good number of pieces count as discoveries certainly to me. Even some of the repeats appear here in alternate versions (Grainger almost obsessively re-arranged his own work for various combinations). The major find on the program has to be the first complete recording of Grainger's cycle from The Jungle Book.
Grainger, a composer of many instrumental works, including his "imaginary ballet," The Warriors, considered himself primarily a choral composer and his favorite work in the genre his Jungle Book cycle, here recorded for the first time in its entirety, so this CD has great importance for Grainger fans. I've heard some pieces before, but I'm mad for Grainger's music and seek it out. Grainger did not write all eleven parts in one go but produced them over a span of nearly fifty years. In fact, the first settings come from his teens. Like most of Grainger, the cycle's a bit of a grab-bag. For me, the individual pieces never quite coalesce as a cycle, but that impression could well arise from the order in which they are performed here. The forces vary from piece to piece – from a cappella male choir to dramatic scenas ("The Only Son," for example) with soloists, large instrumental ensembles, and chorus – and some parts exist in several arrangements, most bearing the mark of an individual, virtuosic orchestrator. Grainger maven Barry Peter Ould thoughtfully provides liner notes that include the instrumentation used for each track. Beware, however. Not all the arrangements come from Grainger's pen, and those that don't – although well-crafted – lack Grainger's characteristic daffy audacity. Grainger's music, if nothing else, comes unmistakably from a very unusual musical mind.
"Good-Bye to Love" represents Grainger at his most sentimental. He wrote it originally as a piano miniature for his former mistress on the occasion of her marriage to someone else. The arrangement by Allan Gibbs – for tenor soloist, 6-part chorus, strings, and harp – lays an additional heavy dollop of treacle over everything, supplying words taken from Grainger's comments on the piece (Grainger's dead, of course, and can't defend his work from well-intentioned tampering) and, generally speaking, tarting up a modest original. The graceful turns on the solo piano become plummy swoops and scoops in the chorus and harp – Liberace music. Fortunately, this remains the only significant blemish (and a mere four minutes, at that).on the program.
"Shallow Brown" makes yet another appearance on a recent CD, and I can't seem to get enough of it. It tells the story of a friend about to go "away accrost the ocean," at a time before convenient and mostly safe transportation when "going away" meant "going away for good," one way or another. Its structure is bone-simple: solo lines alternating with choral refrain. Grainger stretches it out to over six minutes and creates a dramatic lament that moves you to the pain and, in a funny way, the nurture of sorrow. The orchestra sounds like a mandolin symphony, full of gigantic thrumming. In addition to choir and soloist, the instrumental group calls for four guitars, two mandolas, two mandolins, two ukuleles, strings and piano usually in tremolo, saturating the texture with an intense shimmer. Grainger also tosses in piccolo, three clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two alto saxophones, and French horn, with harmonium as a fill-in color. It's all a Turner seascape, with the strumming instruments imitating the constant lap of wind and wave and the woodwinds providing the cries of the wild birds. I consider Layton's and David Wilson-Johnson's performance the finest on this CD – indeed, one of the work's best on record, fully equal to Britten's and John Shirley-Quirk's classic account – searingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.
As a choral composer, Grainger puts heavy demands on his singers, especially on their ability to stay in tune from chord to chord, often in pretty thick textures. In "The Beaches of Lukannon"– here sung in a version for mixed chorus, strings, and harmonium – he makes the male choir take the first verse a cappella through some very tricky chord changes before he brings in the instruments, and the last chord of the men mostly matches the first chord of the ensemble (I hear a shift from major to minor, but that's it). Addicted to new orchestral colors, he also calls for unusual vocal colors: "yelps" in "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack" to imitate a wolf pack; more wolf-baying in "Red Dog." The Brits seem to grow wonderful vocal ensembles like mushrooms. Their general standard – of tone, blend, intonation, diction, and all-round musicianship – I consider the highest in the world, although individual groups from other places may surpass a particular British choir. Polyphony meets the highest standards of British choirs. Grainger doesn't make things easy for them. His harmonic language is, to put it mildly, fluid, and, as I say, he likes rich (or "thick," depending on your fondness for it) textures. The ensemble runs the danger of creating a kind of harmonic haze rather than the sharply-defined chord progressions Grainger constructs. Grainger usually builds in some sort of harmonic conflict, not necessarily related to the level of dissonance. Sometimes he side-slips into distant keys through the most tenuous links, analogous (though not identical) to Prokofieff, as in the lovely and enigmatic "Morning Song in the Jungle." At other times, he makes the "home" tonality ambiguous – you seem to have your choice among two or three keys, also a feature of "Morning Song." These effects "destabilize" the music without calling attention to themselves. Grainger makes them relevant to the emotional point of the piece – usually the mystery of "primitive" nature or the evanescence of life.
Grainger's The Jungle Book, despite its idiosyncrasies, captures the essence of Kipling at his best. It sings with great sympathy for the victims of civilized man and with blazing energy of nature "red in tooth and claw." However, overall the cycle presents the impression of things passing away. Here, one sees the point of Grainger's view of his music as a "pilgrimage of sorrows."
Layton gives us a generous program. In addition to the cycle, we have more folk-song and Kipling settings. My favorites include "Died for Love," for soprano and string trio, in which a counter-melody derived from the final line of the tune, runs rhythmically against the folk-song's course; it lasts just over a minute. Libby Crabtree has a small, slightly constricted voice, but it's affecting in this folk tune, recalling a genuine folk singer. "Six Dukes Went Afishin'," normally found in its piano-vocal arrangement, is heard in Grainger's setting for mixed voices. It's an odd work, about six dukes who find the body of a seventh murdered in the stream, and goes on to talk of such things as embalming. The music is restrained and beautiful. Peter Pears and Britten did a classic "Willow, Willow" for their landmark CD in the version for tenor, solo violin, strings, and harp, also done here. Layton's tenor, John Mark Ainsley, has a fresher voice than Pears's, but he's not as accomplished a singer. In particular, he has difficulty with the short "i" sound. Thus, "Willow, willow" becomes "Wee-low, wee-low," a bit annoying, since the phrase repeats so many times. Grainger's setting of Kipling's "Recessional" sounds a cross between Protestant hymnody and Vaughan Williams (not necessarily incompatible), with the characteristic Grainger ambiguity of key center.
Overall, Gardiner seems to invest more energy in his recent Philips program (Philips 446657-2) and gets a bigger payoff than Layton. However, that comparison aside, Layton and Polyphony do a fine job with more essentially new repertoire. Hyperion's sound doesn't call attention to itself, one way or the other.

Steve Schwartz


Bonus disc (digital download)
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The Jungle Book' was the last animated feature personally produced by Walt Disney. Initially released in 1967 the film received an Oscar nomination for the song 'The Bare Necessities'.This CD contains for the first time the entire original soundtrack plus an interview with Academy-award winning songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman. The interview segment features demo material and 2 rare songs; 'Baloo's Blues' and 'It's A Kick'.Original score composed by George Bruns. Original songs composed by Richard M. Sherman Robert B. Sherman and Terry Gilkyson.Originally recorded between February 1964 and June 1967.