Always Effective
Orchestral music by
Louis Théodore Gouvy -
heard by
STEPHEN FRANCIS VASTA'... definitely worth your attention.'
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I'd not heard of the French composer Louis Théodore Gouvy (1819-1898) until recently, when I heard his oratorio Oedipe à Colone, a score that, striking generalized Romantic postures while nodding to oratorio tradition, didn't sound particularly French. The symphonic music collected here, on the other hand, does -- to different degrees and in different styles!
The half-hour Fourth Symphony hews more closely to early-Romantic Austro-German models than to a distinctive nationalist aesthetic. The annotator, Joachim Fontaine, cites Beethoven's influence, but I more readily hear Schumann's -- as when the agitated opening theme gives way to a flowing, but still agitated, second group; or in the lyric breadth of the Larghetto...
Copyright © 28 September 2013
Stephen Francis Vasta,
New York, USA
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