Vincent d'Indy - Médée; Karadec Suite; Saugefleurie

Vincent d'INDY (1851–1931)

Médée, Op. 47

Karadec Suite, Op. 34

Saugefleurie, Op. 21

Malmö Symphony Orchestra

Darrell Ang

Release Date: 10th May 2019

Rarely heard in the concert hall, d’Indy’s characterful and richly scored music is heavily reliant on recordings for its continued exposure. All three works on this release have been recorded previously, most recently as part of a series of the composer’s orchestral output by Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for Chandos. Saugefleurie is the earliest piece here, a symphonic poem from 1884 suffused with the influence of Wagner, d’Indy having become an ardent enthusiast for the German master’s music after attending the first performance of the Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1876. The music of Siegfried in particular is a key influence at a number of points, but the work’s luminous scoring and sense of purpose makes for an engaging listen and the serene conclusion is deeply felt.

By contrast, the Karadec Suite, extracted from the incidental music d’Indy wrote in 1890 for a play, draws on Breton folk melodies for its inspiration. The three items that comprise the suite amount to less than 10 minutes of music but each is distinctive and strongly communicative. More substantial is Médée, a five-movement suite derived from d’Indy’s 1898 music for the play by the French poet and dramatist Catulle Mendès. In addition to the folk melodies found in the second movement, echoes of Act 2 of Parsifal can be heard in the first and last movements and there is more than a hint of Tchaikovsky in the fourth. Nevertheless, d’Indy manages to unite these disparate influences into an attractive score, the shimmering, Impressionistic opening and closing stages of the third movement being particularly memorable. The playing of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under Darrell Ang is vividly expressive and the recording is first-class.