Sergei Prokofiev
Symphonies No. 5 In B Flat
Op. 100 And No. 7 In C Sharp Minor, Op. 131

Jean Martinon Conducting
The Orchestre de la Societe du Concerts du Conservatoire

Review By Max Westler
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  Charles Munch first encountered Jean Martinon in his conducting class at the Paris Conservatory, and soon became Martinon's mentor and close friend. When in 1934 Munch had to withdraw from a London engagement, he made sure Martinon was his replacement, thereby launching his former student's international career.

It must have given the older man no small measure of satisfaction when Martinon was installed in Chicago as Fritz Reiner's successor, at just about the same time Munch's 23-year tenure in Boston was coming to a close. But following in the authoritarian Reiner's footsteps proved difficult for the more democratic Frenchman, and Martinon, much like Rafael Kubelik before him, soon found himself in the crosshairs of the vile Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy, who used her considerable influence to make his position untenable.

The recordings Martinon made in Chicago testify to a more distinguished partnership with the orchestra than the indignity of his departure would suggest. His exciting and magisterial performances of Ravel, Nielsen, Hindemith, Bartok, Varese, and Frank Martin belong in the collection of anyone with an abiding interest in 20^th-century music.

Repatriated to his native soil, Martinon became the principal conductor of the French National Radio Orchestra. He produced another run of splendid recordings, this time almost entirely of French repertoire — complete cycles of Ravel and Debussy, with some Roussel and Berlioz thrown in for good measure. There is also a complete cycle of Prokofiev symphonies, still awaiting reissue.

Martinon first came to international attention with a series of early stereo recordings for Decca, of mostly Russian repertoire: Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Shostakovich, and these two symphonies by Prokofiev. In the U.S. these were released on RCA. They created quite a stir, as much for the quality of the sound as for the interpretations. Brilliantly remastered by Paul Bailey, this Testament disc captures that very distinctive sound with exacting fidelity. Whereas too many early stereo productions exhibited a woefully thin upper end and tubby (or nonexistent) bass, the engineering team (James Walker and Kenneth Wilkinson) gave us clear and spacious imaging, refined and detailed at both top and bottom. It was these recordings and the ones produced by Wilma Cozart for Mercury that first taught me the musical and dynamic possibilities of stereo sound, and I still use them to measure improvements in my system.

My first Prokofiev Fifth was Ormandy's, the monthly selection from the Columbia Record Club. I owe that performance a debt of gratitude, for I responded to the music instantly, and the piece soon became (and has remained) one of my favorite 20th-century works. The Martinon performance, encountered about a year later, came as a shock, for it couldn't have been more different. Whereas Ormandy's approach is generalized, plush-sounding (Oh those Philidelphia strings!), and in the end rather sentimentalized, Martinon is brisk, incisive, and cool. For Ormandy, Prokofiev is a late Romantic, and he makes the Fifth kin to later, more richly melodic works like the ballet Romeo and Juliet. For Martinon, Prokofiev is still the enfant terrible, and the Fifth a late extension of the iconoclastic, boldly defined style that gave us early pieces like Le Pas D'acier and Scythian Suite.

Martinon doesn't slow down for lyric episodes; and especially in the first and third movements the restlessness and tension are pretty much unrelieved. If there seems more bitterness and dissonance than usual here, we should remember that Martinon experienced most of World War II as a prisoner of war. After the turmoil and anguish of the first three movements, most interpreters try to give the symphony a happy ending — but not Martinon. His finale is bracing and grim; even the "donkey bray" sounds cruelly ironic.

There is much to admire in Martinon's rigor, but I have two problems with this performance. The orchestra sounds a bit under the weather: thin-sounding strings, nasally winds, and sometimes wobbly brass undermine Martinon's exactitude. More seriously, his unrelenting severity misses the contrast between hope and despair that gives this music its essential character. Written toward the end of the war and premiered with the sound of artillery fire echoing in the distance, the symphony tries to look in two directions at once: backward to the despair and struggle of the war, forward to better times. The single-minded Martinon gets only the "backward" part right.

Over the years, I've come to favor slower tempos in this music, though maybe not as marmoreally slow as Bernstein in both of his two versions. I would instead direct interested parties to the justly esteemed Karajan recording, currently available at mid-price as one of DG's "Originals" reissues. Though Karajan's approach to modern music is sometimes too streamlined and deliberate, his Fifth is both nuanced and muscular in ways that well serve the character of the music.

If you've always suspected that the Prokofiev Seventh is a better work than most performances make it seem, Martinon is just the man for you. It suggests much about the art of conducting that the approach that falls short in the Fifth works perfectly in the Seventh. Though it's true that the Seventh cannot stand comparison with the four symphonies that precede it, it has too long been dismissed as superficial and uninspired, Prokofiev's attempt to write the kind of optimistic, vaporous music the party apparatus had been demanding of him. Most performances follow suit, presenting the work less as a symphony than as a lighthearted pastiche.

In this case, Martinon's austere and unsentimental approach gives the music stature, a surprising depth and seriousness. The dominant mood here is nostalgia, as if the composer was trying to evoke the Russia he knew as a child. In Martinon's hands, the ever-changing fluidity of the music suggests the ephemeral nature of memory itself. Typically in this work, the more lighthearted themes are subjected to unexpected digressions or sudden displacements, and Martinon makes much of this ambiguity throughout. As a result his Seventh is a more complex and compelling experience than we're used to hearing. Which is not to say he slights the soaring, wistful melodies, the delicate waltzes, or the hurly-burly gallop at the end. And happily, the orchestra sounds much better here, more full-bodied and committed than they did in the Fifth recorded barely a month earlier. French orchestras have long had the reputation of playing like either unruly schoolchildren or angels; and in these two performances you hear both sides of that split musical personality.

I recommend this disc for its definitive Seventh and its detailed, spacious sound. Even if you pass up the aforementioned Karajan, there remain many excellent recordings of the Fifth to choose from. And who knows, Martinon's virtues in the Fifth may prove to your liking. But this is at present the only acceptable recording of the Seventh — a performance that makes that shamefully neglected score sound absolutely indispensable.

Prokofiev Fifth

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Prokofiev Seventh

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