Koechlin's Ballade, a 20-minute work cast in a single movement comprising seven sections, was completed in 1919, when the composer was 52 years old. The style is conservative for its time most of the music is slow in pulse and the solo pianist gets little chance to shine. After two hearings the impression remains of a sprawling, meandering composition which has little to offer.
The Seven Stars Symphony dates from 1933 and remarkably the composer's style had changed radically in late middle age to become quite 'modern'. Film stars, rather than astral bodies, form the subjects of the piece, which offers musical portraits of such cinema notables as Douglas Fairbanks (an ''oriental improvisation'' to portray the hero of The Thief of Baghdad), Greta Garbo (a pagan chorale), Marlene Dietrich (variations on a theme based on the letters of her name) and Charlie Chaplin, whose last movement is by far the most extended character study. Koechlin's music here is quite colourful, quirky and entertaining, but inspiration is not really very high, and the work is no more than a minor curiosity.
Performances are committed—and lively in the case of the symphony—but I have the feeling that the latter in particular would gain from more inspired direction and a more obviously virtuoso orchestra. The recordings are very good.'