Shlomo Mintz and his colleagues give a vividly energetic, virtuoso performance, its one slightly questionable aspect, a very slow account of the “Pastorale”, amply justified by dramatic context: it is a moment of poignancy (the Soldier has been robbed by the Devil of family, friends, fiancee and three years of his life) and of suspense. But do you want the dramatic context? In one sense, of course: Stravinsky’s music is a response to C-F. Ramuz’s fable (to a plot provided by the composer himself) and his carefully detailed dramaturgy. But most modern recordings of the Suite from L’histoire du soldat included all but a few seconds of the music that we hear in a complete staging. Any recording of the whole work must surely make the most of Ramuz’s drama.
This recording was made at around the same time as a charity concert performance by the same artists. Understandably, since no one would have wanted to underuse Gerard Depardieu and his colleagues on such an occasion, it uses the revised, 1946 edition of the spoken text, which is longer than the original, giving the actors more to do. Also understandably, though upsetting Ramuz’s studied anti-realism, it reassigns certain of the Narrator’s lines to the Soldier (who would otherwise be silent for the last quarter-of-an-hour of the piece, his words simply ‘reported’ by the Narrator). More curiously, one rather effective scene for the Devil is omitted, possibly because it involves a repeat of the “Royal march”, and with the existing scenario already requiring two repeats of “The soldier’s march” and one each of the “Air beside a stream” and the “Pastorale”, it might have looked as though Stravinsky’s music were being somewhat stretched.
The actors’ performance is excellent, but has curiously little redolence of the stage. Depardieu lavishes remarkable vocal resource on his role, but makes no attempt to imitate an old woman when the Devil appears disguised as one. Bouquet is an agreeably conversational, unassertive Narrator and Guillaume Depardieu a likeable Soldier. But with no movement and no sound effects (we might have heard the pages of the magic book being turned, and what about the cutting of cards?) the spoken scenes seem protracted, no doubt wearisomely so to any non-French-speaking listener (no translation is provided). Neeme Jarvi’s recording is only a little less pungent than Mintz’s, and with Aage Haugland taking all the spoken parts (in English, subtly and humorously characterized), vastly more entertaining.'