Paul Sacher used to tell a story of Honegger conducting in rehearsal. At one point the first oboe put up a hand: ‘Please‚ maître‚ in bar 240‚ is it a B flat or a B natural?’ Honegger: ‘Which would you prefer?’ Sacher made clear that this was not Honegger saying ‘Don’t ask silly questions!’‚ but rather exercising his Swiss‚ democratic spirit. Similarly‚ as Sacher lamented‚ dynamic and other markings on Honegger’s scores are in fairly short supply and conductors have to use their own taste and judgment. With some exceptions (one noted below)‚ tempo markings could also be taken as suggestions rather than as imperatives. The first thing to say about this recording is that it is in most respects excellent. The textures‚ compared with those of the Dutoit version‚ are clearer and sharper and passages like the contrapuntal tour de force in the last movement of the Fourth Symphony (5'14"­7'04") are all the more impressive for it. In the slow movement of the same symphony‚ Luisi gets more bite out of the lower strings and less boom. The Suisse Romande’s solo woodwind are fresh and seductive‚ with a particularly fine first oboe (sticking to Honegger’s notes throughout) while‚ on the other hand‚ the clarity of the recording can bring with it a certain bleakness‚ entirely appropriate at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony‚ which here comes over rather like Sibelius. Where Dutoit sometimes scores is in the more tender moments (his Pastorale d’été is a touch more loving than Luisi’s) and in generally faster tempos for the symphony finales. In those of the first two symphonies‚ Luisi’s tempos sound just a little heavy. But his penchant for slower speeds brings notable rewards both in the central movement of the Third Symphony and in the final Adagio of the third Mouvement symphonique (what a pity that this nondescript title‚ the result of what Honegger confessed to as ‘a failure of imagination’‚ has kept this splendid work out of the mainstream repertoire!). This latter passage‚ only marginally affected by a few flat alto saxophone notes at the top of the range‚ makes Dutoit’s Adagio seem like a light­weight Andante. Luisi is alive to the strong element of melancholy and disillusion in this music – strong also in Honegger himself. Where‚ in the opening of the Second Symphony‚ Jansons allows himself to get increasingly excited by the repeated viola figure‚ Luisi recognises it as the call of fate‚ that changeth not. On the other hand‚ his invented dynamics for the uninflected cello/violin dialogue in the slow movement (0'57"­2'52")‚ discreet though they are‚ shape the paragraph most persuasively. A large measure of Honegger’s disillusion came from what he saw as the triumph of the forces of collectivism over the individual human spirit‚ and in the Third Symphony Luisi brings out the solo cello line in the third movement (7'43") as the voice of the composer crying out against the waste of war. To me‚ Dutoit’s absorption of the solo cello into the upper string line seems to miss the point here. Luisi also obeys one of the composer’s rare dictats over tempo: Honegger knew that conductors weren’t going to like the slow speed of crotchet=52 for the central Adagio mesto of the Second Symphony‚ but he stuck by it none the less. If one compares this tempo even with Janson’s very nearly obedient crotchet=56‚ one can’t help concluding that Honegger and Luisi are both right. And that goes for most of the music on these three discs.