Blindfold listening tests will thrive on this one, though the fact that Victor De Sabata’s music sounds like everyone and no-one is enough to raise suspicions that it’s the work of a conductor. Annotator Robert Matthew-Walker makes the sympathetic claim that hearing these works (they constitute the bulk of De Sabata’s orchestral output) ‘enables us to make some kind of restitution towards a more rounded appreciation of the art of a very great musician’. True, but not a terribly important reason for listening, not unless you’re a student of conductors and of Victor De Sabata in particular.
We’re not told if or when De Sabata stopped composing, though we do know that at the time of his death he was working on a suite made up of earlier material. All three works programmed here are lusciously scored, with La notte di Platon (The Night of Plato, 1923) approximating the overall shape of Strauss’s Tod und Verklarung – agitation at the start and centre with a serene transformation to close. The subject of the flesh versus the spirit inspires music that, in addition to the obvious spectre of Strauss, calls on Stravinsky’s Rite, Respighi and possibly Chausson. Gethsemani has a stronger thematic profile, though its contemplative element is extremely sensual. Again, late-German romanticism is a sure point of reference though Juventus – once championed by Toscanini – has an almost Waltonian exuberance, coloured (near the end) by just a hint of Puccini. Although the earliest work on the disc (it dates from 1919), it is surely the most original.
All three scores would sit very happily astride the Silver Screen, preferably a religious epic. The scoring is extremely dextrous, if sometimes over-thick, and the harmonic writing shrouded in the aura of works that De Sabata himself conducted with such tremendous flair. Speaking personally, that’s how I’d want to remember him, as a top draw re-creator rather than a second-rung creator. But if you fancy a quality wallow, you couldn’t hope for a better played, or more richly recorded, trio of performances