D’INDY Wallenstein. Saugefleurie. Lied, op. 19.1 Choral varié1 • Thierry Fischer, cond; Lawrence Power (va);1 BBC Natl O, Wales • HYPERION 67690 (73: 42)

Unless I’ve missed something, d’Indy’s Wallenstein trilogy has not been visited on discs since Pierre Dervaux’s 1975 tilt with the Loire band. Saugefleurie has done somewhat better, with two recordings from the early 1990s—by Gilles Nopre and the Württemberg Phil (marco polo 8.223659, Fanfare 18:3) and Theodor Guschlbauer leading the Strasbourg Phil (Valois 4686, Fanfare 17:3). Though no longer available, the latter is well worth tracking down for its closer, more detailed sound, warmer phrasing, and engaging narrative trajectory. Fischer’s is far from a bad performance, but seems tentative where Guschlbauer and the Strasbourg Phil evince immediate lift. The Valois album is coupled with a fine account of Souvenirs and his swaggering Third Symphony,“de bello gallico,” and is thus de rigueur for anyone who cares for d’Indy. Throughout Wallenstein, one is gratified by far more immediate presence than the Dervaux, and a panoramic but transparently detailed aural perspective, as well as the BBC Wales band’s brilliant realization of d’Indy’s orchestral wizardry, which comes off in scrappy approximations chez Dervaux. Fischer’s search for nuance, however, blunts d’Indy’s exuberant forward march—we feel it as early as the second theme of Wallenstein’s “Camp,” where the swaggering festivities of a victorious army take an incongruously kinder, gentler turn. D’Indy’s own remarkably buoyant direction of Wallenstein’s “Camp” with an unnamed orchestra, made in 1931, the year of his death (long-playing Perennial 2008), is closer in pacing and phrasing to Dervaux’s, for what that’s worth. The weakness of Fischer’s approach becomes malingeringly apparent, if you’ll allow, in the love music for Max and Thécla, where his dawdling attentions reveal less d’Indy’s very specific program than the thinness of his melodic inspiration. But where the program takes wing, Fischer and the band top Dervaux in spades for scintillance and flair.

A cello was the designated solo for the Lied, while a saxophone was specified for the Choral varié—the viola is a more than acceptable substitute for both, especially managed with Lawrence Power’s eloquence and rich croon (rather than the average violist’s too often heard whine). Notes by d’Indy’s biographer, Andrew Thomson, provide biographical context as well as extensive musicological analyses, though—how odd—he refers to the Piccolominis, father and son—prominent characters in the Schiller dramas which spurred d’Indy’s imagination—as “Piccolini.” No matter. The seldom-heard Lied and Choral varié join several other substantial, attractive d’Indy pieces—e.g., the Fantaisie sur des thèmes populaires français (included in the marco polo album)—which will interest instrumentalists and audiences alike, while the first recording in a generation of the Wallenstein trilogy is not only a must-have but the flagship of a d’Indy boomlet, appearing within months of the 19-year-old’s first, if disowned, symphony, “Symphonie italienne,” and Diane Andersen’s tilt at the great E-Minor Piano Sonata. Meanwhile, this is enthusiastically recommended.

FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis