In a recent review of Joseph Jongen’s music (5/03) I suggested that perhaps he was a composer who improved with age. His Triptyque, completed in 1938 when he was in his mid-sixties, may just be an exception to the rule. At all events, it really does not have enough substance to justify its 25-minute length, despite Jongen’s ability, even mastery, as an orchestrator; and while his patent reference in the third movement to the dawn scene from Daphnis was doubtless made in a spirit of admiration rather than competition, it was a decision that Yes, Minister’s Sir Humphrey would surely categorise as ‘bold – even controversial’. In bulk, the opulent orchestral sound also begins to lose its allure since it rarely serves to move any sort of argument onwards.

Happily, the earlier orchestrated songs are altogether more interesting and successful. It was bold indeed in 1902 to make another version of ‘Après un rêve’ for his Op 25 set, but the result is well worth hearing: less passionate and more elegant than Fauré’s setting, and holding out some hope that the dream might indeed return. Jongen responds to his texts with concentration, nowhere more so than in the first three songs, inspired by the First World War, on texts by Franz Hellens, of Op 57. The colouring here is sparer and at times even brutal. The central song, ‘Le carnaval des tranchées’ (‘Carnival of the trenches’), is harshly Expressionist and builds to a truly terrifying climax. To these three Jongen added two more that lead us back to more peaceful territory: we are left to make up our own minds as to how the two groups are meant to interact.

For the most part Mariette Kemmer sings expressively and with audible words. Her voice thins out rather in the upper reaches, and she is not always helped by her rather backward placing vis-à-vis the orchestra, from which Pierre Bartholomée draws a wide range of sounds, from the delicate to the blazing.