La Belle France: Music Inspired by France

by Various Artists

Fantasy Warehouse Clearance Sale (series)

This is a wonderful collection of extracts from other Telarc recordings of works by French composers. It serves as a compilation and a sampler that may well lead you to buying several of the other Telarc CDs from which these selections were taken. The digital sound, as usual with Telarc, is brilliantly clear without being harsh, brash, or loud. The dynamics are perfect, without any of the problems one sometimes encounters in compilations, of shifting sound levels. Finally, the performances are pristine and filled with wondrous beauty. Each selection is soothing without being soporific. In fact, as relaxing as this collection is, instead of putting me to sleep it actually made me feel more alert as I listened to it, because of the excellent quality of the performances and the clarity of the recorded sound. The only difficulty I have in evaluating this compilation is choosing a favorite selection, or even two or three favorites out of the fifteen on this disc. They're all wonderful, from the orchestral arrangements of Faure and Satie, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, to the selections of Debussy performed on harp by Yolanda Kondonassis, to Faure's Prelude and Sicilienne (from Pelleas et Melisande) conducted by one of the greatest choral conductors of the twentieth century, Robert Shaw. Five of the fifteen tracks, fully one third, are selections from works composed by Gabriel Faure (1845 - 1924), a pupil of Saint-Saens and an underappreciated composer in the United States. Hopefully, this disc will help to contribute to a better appreciation of one of the most gifted and original French 19th composers in the generation before Debussy (who actually outlived Debussy by six years).