Search - Paul Dukas, Dennis Simons, Yan Pascal Tortelier :: Paul Dukas: Symphony In C Major/Polyeucte Overture

Paul Dukas, Dennis Simons, Yan Pascal Tortelier
Paul Dukas: Symphony In C Major/Polyeucte Overture
Genre: Classical

Track Listings (4) - Disc #1
1. Symphony In C Major: I Allegro non troppo vivace, ma con fuoco
2. Symphony In C Major: II Andante espressivo e sostenuto
3. Symphony In C Major: III Allegro spiritoso
4. Polyeucte Overture

CD Details

All Artists: Paul Dukas, Dennis Simons, Yan Pascal Tortelier
Title: Paul Dukas: Symphony In C Major/Polyeucte Overture
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Chandos
Release Date: 3/22/1994
Genre: Classical
Style: Symphonies
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 095115922521

Synopsis

Amazon.com

Dukas and Debussy were exact contemporaries, but Dukas's music tends to follow the 19th-century strain of French Romanticism in the grand manner of Berlioz. (Tchaikovsky is also a heavy influence.) The works on this disc are Dukas's very first mature compositions for orchestra. The Symphony in C Major (1902) is in a peculiar 9/8 time signature, but has a quite lucid theme and subtheme interplay. It's not as showy as The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but it ranks alongside the symphonies of Camille Saint-Saëns. The overture to Polyeucte has more Wagnerian influences, but is still well worth our attention. --Paul Cook

CD Reviews

Exquisite Performance of a Rare Work

James R. Maclean | Seattle, WA United States | 03/14/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is not an easy work of music to find in recorded form. Dukas is mainly known for his "Sorcerer's Apprentice," and not much else. So I was delighted to find this rare and deeply Romantic work on the Chandos label. Yan Pascal Tortelier's conducting is sensitive and grave; the result is especially moving in the andante espressivo movement of the Symphony in C, where enigmatic themes converge to a dark and dreamlike sweetness. But the piece de resistance is the Polyeucte Overture, which is tender and brooding. It is never bombastic or bellicose; it is always as gentle as the wind through a forest, yet the themes are vigorous and fulfilling."