With their records of Roussel's Padmavati and symphonies by Chausson, d'Indy and Magnard, a valuable contributions have been made by Michel Plasson and his Toulouse orchestra to a revival of interest in a generation of French composers whose works have largely fallen out of the repertoire. Their rescue mission is continued with the choral symphony by Magnard's close friend Guy Ropartz, a highly cultivated Breton pupil of Massenet and Franck who exercised considerable influence on French musical life, first as director, for a quarter of a century, of the conservatoire at Nancy and then, for a further decade, of that in Strasbourg. Of his prolific output as a composer—an opera, six symphonies, 12 symphonic poems, three Masses, much chamber and instrumental music and more besides—the sole work of his ever to reach the gramophone, apart from one organ piece, has been an instrumental quintet (Decca 414 063-1DJ, 12/84); but now amends are made with an eloquent and deeply committed performance of this vast-scale symphony, which he himself regarded as one of the most important works of his maturity.
The texts in the symphony, by the composer himself (who in his youth had published collections of poetry), form a moral sermon: an invocation to the glories of Nature prompts a comparison with human distress and gives way to pessimistic doubts over the reason for our lives and despair at war and oppression; hope and joy in Nature, it concludes, depend only on our loving one another. These texts are not set as a continuity but are broken up, serving as springboards for orchestral development of the sentiments expressed—particularly the paean to Nature in the first movement and the tormented scherzo that forms the latter part of the central movement. Franckian influence can be detected in the transformation of themes throughout the work (done with the greatest subtlety) and in a mannerism of nudging the harmony chromatically upwards towards a climactic point, but the music possesses an individual quality, besides craftsmanship of a very high order: what it may lack—and I speak after only a couple of hearings—is themes strong enough to stay in the mind.
Plasson paces the work well and secures excellent playing from the large orchestra, which is recorded with admirable clarity; but both the chorus (which though a bit light in tenors produces very acceptable singing) and, particularly, the solo quartet (whose internal balance seems somewhat casual) could have done with more forward placing if the words are to make their point.'