The year 1990 is the centenary of Frank Martin's birth but its celebration has been muted. Although his current representation in the catalogue is better than it was, we badly need new recordings of Golgotha, briefly available in the 1970s on Erato, Le vin herbe, currently available in a satisfactory but not ideal 1961 Jecklin/ Pinnacle recording and, above all, The Tempest, excerpts from which DG have just restored to circulation.
The present issue gives us the pioneering recording of his masterpiece, the Petite symphonie concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano and double string orchestra, which I happen to remember very well as it was among the first LPs I ever bought. It sounded pretty state-of-the-art at the time, though the passage of nearly four decades has taken its toll, particularly insofar as the string tone is concerned. This does call for tolerance. It is possible that the composer was present at the recording sessions, for there is a concentration, authority and atmosphere that is quite special and which no subsequent account has ever matched. On some copies of the LP there was a very slight pitch fluctuation, but this is not present here and the three solo instruments sound altogether excellent. The soloists, incidentally, are not named either in the jewel-box presentation or on the CD label: they are Pierre Jamet (harp), Germaine Vauchet-Clerc (harpsichord) and Doris Rossiaud (piano) and their contribution is dedicated enough to earn acknowledgement.
No allowances need be made for the quality of the sound in the two companion works, the Concerto for seven wind instruments and the Etudes, which were recorded in the early 1960s but sound exceptionally fresh and vivid. I was surprised when I played the original LP a few months ago just how good it was for its age, and the CD has even greater body and range. In the Concerto Martin makes the most of the varying expressive sonorities of the seven instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn and trombone), which, as he put it, ''differ so greatly in their manner of producing sound and in their mechanism... each musical element is connected with one soloist, and they make up a conversation in which each speaks his own language''. The middle movement, an ostinato which accompanies various melodic strands, some elegant and serene, others sombre and violent, is one of his most haunting creations.
Although the Ansermet performance was not quite as brilliant as Martinon's 1967 account with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA—nla), it is still eminently characterful and idiomatic, as is the playing of the Suisse Romande strings in the ingenious Etudes of 1956, written like the Petite symphonie concertante for Paul Sacher and the Basle Chamber Orchestra. This is one of my records of 1990.'