Manuel Rosenthal’s name is well known as a conductor, and as arranger of the high-spirited Offenbach caper Gaite Parisienne, to all record collectors; but his compositions have remained almost virgin territory. Record companies have now shown some stirrings of curiosity about the output of someone, now in his ninety-second year, who for so many years has been a distinguished figure in French musical life. Among his compositions are a handful of operettas, a couple of ballets, cantatas, orchestral, chamber and instrumental works and songs; this disc, however, presents him only in miniatures. Even the lavish Musique de table, a “concerto for orchestra”, consists of eight musically unrelated movements depicting, with humour, the courses of a banquet, incidentally offering considerable challenges to all the players: indeed, if the insert-note is to be believed, both the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic initially jibbed at its difficulties. The Nancy orchestra, which we have scarcely heard before, rises admirably to the occasion and, well supported by a very good recording, proves itself a body of quality.
Rosenthal’s light-hearted set of ten character pieces about Parisian artisans and small tradesmen (Les petits metiers) is not only vastly entertaining (rather in the Ibert vein of breezy gaminerie), but also a dazzling display of virtuosity in orchestral scoring – as befits a favourite pupil of Ravel: the full extent of his imaginative ear can be best appreciated by a comparison with the piano originals from which they were developed. (These are well played by Daniel Blumenthal on an Etcetera disc, unfortunately not currently available in the UK.) There is exquisite orchestral colour too in “Reverie”, the first of the Marie Roustan songs; but Catherine Dubosc is unfortunately not ideally placed in relation to the microphone; her high notes impinge too strongly, marring her line. The three religious pieces are more restrained in style, and the wartime sonnets display a more advanced idiom, distancing itself from the composer’s Ravelian roots and, in the second, venturing into atonality.'