Schmitt: Salammbo - Mercier (1993)

Florent Schmitt
Salammbô - Trois Suites d'orchestre Op. 76

Choeur de l'Armée Française
Orchestre National d'Île-de-France
Jacques Mercier
RCA Red Seal - BMG 74321 733952


"Who will be the Flaubert of French music?"

The question was asked by Charles Koechlin in his article from 1925 on the "current trends in modern French music". Later that year, after a showing of the film version of Flaubert'sSalammbô at the Paris Opéra, Koechlin himself could have answered - "Florent Schmitt will"

And although the lavish screen adaptation of Flaubert's novel was severely criticized for lacking the beauty and grandeur of the original, the critics praised Schmitt's score unanimously. It alone was "Flaubertian", a worthy match for the great writer's impassioned prose.

The score, with its luscious Orientalism, was the result of Schmitt's rich and varied experience as a composer and his longstanding fascination with things oriental. The composer won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1900 with the cantata "Sémiramis", and during his stay at Villa Medici he spent much of his time travelling the southern Mediterrenean countries, and experienced Islam at first hand from Morocco to East Turkey. The repercussions of his discovery of the real Orient became apparent in his work, including his two large scale biblical masterpieces, Psaume XLVII and "La Tragédie de Salomé" and the later Arabian Nights-like "La Légende" or the stage music for Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra".

When the film producer Louis Aubert and the director Pierre Marodon commissioned him to write the music for their silent film "Salammbô", Schmitt was not just one of the most famous composers of the interwar years, but also the greatest living orientalist composer, Saint-Saenshaving died four years earlier in Algiers.

The two-hour film score was written rapidly during the summer of 1925, for the Palais Garnier première of October 22nd that year. A few months later, the composer extracted three large orchestral suites from the massive score, the third of which added a chorus. The first concert perfomance took place in March 1927. They were published by Durand as "Salammbô: Illustration de quelques pages de Gustave Flaubert". This was the composer's way of quietly dissociating himself from the film, which he considered "rather incoherent".

(Adapted from Catherine Lorent original CD's liner notes).

With distant echoes of "Parsifal", and closely associated to Debussy's "Iberia", Ravel's "Shéhérazade" and "Daphnis et Chloé", Rabaud's "Marouf" and Ibert's "Escales", the 3 Suites from "Salammbô" are here performed by a magnificent Orchestre National d'Île-de-France and the world famous Choeur de l'Armée Française conducted by Jacques Mercier in this 1991 truly excellent recording.

The rare CD, a BMG France release, was purchased at the historic and charming Parisian oop shop "La Dame Blanche" in rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève, close to the Panthéon, on December 3rd 2000. Do not miss this hidden treasure on your next trip to Paris (http://www.ladameblanche.fr/), it is also conveniently situated at walking distance from another outstanding budget CD store of Paris, "Gibert Joseph" of Blvd. Saint Michel.

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