Honegger's wartime symphony for strings with trumpet obbligato is the most recorded of his five symphonies, and is one of his most deeply characteristic works. It is permeated by the dark pessimism of the times yet there is a powerful rhythmic vitality and an unflagging sense of momentum. However, any new version has to be measured alongside the impressive Karajan account which DG have just restored to circulation, and which, as I have said, ''is unlikely to be surpassed on this side of the Great Divide''. Rozhdestvensky's interpretation is generally sympathetic and idiomatic though the last two or three pages of the slow movement from four bars before fig. 6 sag a little. With the best will in the world the strings of the USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra do not match those of the Berlin Philharmonic. Partly because of the acoustic, the trumpet in the finale has a slightly raw quality. But the claims of this issue rest on the interest of the coupling.
Honegger composed a great deal of music for the theatre and for films—indeed, he wrote scores for more than forty films. In 1926 despite the failure of L'lmperatrice au Rocher. Ida Rubinstein invited him to provide a score for d'Annunzio's Phaedre for a performance in Rome the same year. As far as I know, it has never been recorded before. In his short memoir, Je suis Compositeur, Honegger writes of his bizarre encounter with the poet on board a cruiser, and of the scandal accompanying the first performance when the music was drowned by Fascist youths who had been promised that the poet himself would be present. Rozhdestvensky has arranged a suite of six movements from the score lasting 25 minutes, three preludes and ''Procession of Petitioners'', the ''Damnation of Theseus'' and the ''Death of Phedre''. As befits incidental music, these pieces are stronger in atmosphere than argument, but they are hauntingly powerful and cast a strong spell. The three short movements of Honegger's score for Gance's epic Napoleon (1923–27) are by no means as atmospheric or powerful. The Empress's Chaconne is conventional and sentimental. But I would buy this disc for the sake of Phaedre alone for it is a valuable contribution to the Honegger discography.'