Paul Paray's Mercury performance of Chausson's Symphony with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has considerable vitality yet now seems low-powered beside this new version by Serebrier and especially the EMI Pathe Marconi one by Plasson. Partly it is a matter of recorded sound, the Mercury now being a quarter of a century old, and this is an important consideration with sumptuous post-Wagnerian orchestral writing like Chausson's. Serebrier is chiefly associated, by some of us at least, with a fine account of Ives's Symphony No. 4, once on RCA and now reissued by Chandos (ABR1118—to be reviewed later). He obtains a sensitive reading of Chausson's Symphony from the RTBF orchestra as well, though one that is less strongly felt than Plasson's and less vividly recorded. I will not repeat, or paraphrase, the detailed comments that I made when the latter first appeared here in 1981, but Plasson's interpretation is surely the one through which to get to know this fine work. It is full of an elegiac lyrical ardour and Plasson makes the music's emotional charge very evident.
Paray's coupling is an agreeable reading of Chabrier's Suite pastorale, Plasson has Chausson's Soir de fete, and Serebrier goes one better by offering both that and two attractive pieces from Chausson's 1888 music for Bouchor's translation of The Tempest. His last completed orchestral work, the symphonic poem Soir de fete dates from 1897-8, and has the energy, if not quite the musical richness, of the Symphony, and includes some beautiful orchestral scoring. Serebrier's performance again has much to commend it, but Plasson's possesses greater immediacy.'