Landowski Symphonies
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Marcel Landowski
Label: MusiFrance
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 2292-45018-4

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1, 'Jean de la Peur' |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Symphony No. 3, 'Des Espaces' |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Symphony No. 4 |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Composer or Director: Marcel Landowski
Label: MusiFrance
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 67
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 2292-45018-2

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1, 'Jean de la Peur' |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Symphony No. 3, 'Des Espaces' |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Symphony No. 4 |
Marcel Landowski, Composer
French National Orchestra Georges Prêtre, Conductor Marcel Landowski, Composer |
Author: Arnold Whittall
Marcel Landowski (b. 1915, the year before Dutilleux) is not in quite the same class, but the seriousness with which he takes the symphonic principle is clear from this well-recorded, impressively played new disc. I'd judge him to be a worthy rather than inspired disciple of Honegger, his principal mentor, and as much (if not more) a post-romantic as a neo-classicist. Since these three symphonies date from 1949, 1965 and 1988 you get a good overview of his style. He's best in colourful, lively scherzos like the bustling, generally good-humoured finale of the two-movement Third Symphony. Here he seems to shake off the rather portentous manner and amorphous textures of those more extended, deliberately paced movements which tend to culminate in tormented chorales and in which his ethical and religious aspirations are to the fore. As the literary quotations he is inclined to attach to his symphonic movements confirm—for example, ''but slowly another fear arose, and this fear looked at him from inside'' (Symphony No. 1, finale)—Land- owski's faith is not the wholehearted Catholicism of a Messiaen. There are unanswerable questions, and even the finale of the Fourth Symphony, titled ''A Quest'' and having some galvanizing moments of apparent certainty, dies away in indecision. Landowski's penchant for dense harmony and multi-layered rhythmic polyphony doesn't always succeed in contradicting the impression that he would rather be writing something simpler, more straightforwardly tonal. But at their best these symphonies give you a revealing glimpse of the kind of contemporary French music we rarely hear—the kind Boulez wouldn't be seen dead conducting.'
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