One suspects that an hour with Pierre-Octave Ferroud would have been time spent in the company of a man bristling with energy, a razor-sharp wit, a dazzling turn of phrase, and rather less of the chic of some of his contemporary countrymen (he was born in 1900, the year after Poulenc, but died in a car accident aged 36). There would certainly have been an insatiable curiosity for everything new – Ferroud was the founder of organizations promoting new music in Lyon and Paris – and this music is nothing if not ‘on-the-ball’. Bartok is called to mind in the playful (and delightful) portrait sketches of Types, but then the dazzling turns of phrase will just as quickly take you through Ravel, Berg and many more (something of Prokofiev and the style mecanique in the lavishly scored Foules). Indeed, it almost seems as if it were Ferroud’s intention to combine and favourably present as many as possible of the diverse elements of music in the air. And this sleight of hand (for example, it takes a little while to register that the charming first movement of the Serenade is atonal) brings its own rewards, as do the general humour, vitality and lucidity of the music.
As to the Symphony, the latest work here, written in 1930, you can almost hear the starting-pistol that sets in motion the sprint of a Hindemithian fugato. And the importance of folk melody and dance in the outer movements probably reveals Ferroud as a populist, even traditionalist at heart (their working revealing an unexpected kinship with Moeran). But then, in an instant, the music changes to draw again from the Parisian melting-pot (including trombone solos a la Villa-Lobos). The slow movement is very impressive: a shadowy, spectral Andante, with some arresting instrumental choices and unusual harmonic frictions. Indeed, there is a very distinctive harmonic style at work here (the closest parallel I can think of is Roussel). Who knows where it might have led?
This is certainly music that demands virtuoso ensemble of its players and it receives as much of it here as one could rightfully expect, along with an airy and well-detailed balance, which probably owes as much to the general quality of execution and Ferroud’s abilities as an orchestrator as it does to the skill of the engineers.'