Sunday Gramophone with The French Radio Symphony of Strasbourg in a live recording made at the Strasbourg Music Festival of Albert Roussel's Rhapsodie Flamande, conducted by Louis Martin.
March 13, 2011

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Albert Roussel - neglected but not forgotten.


Another cheat this week. This comes via the French Broadcasting Transcription Department and is from a live concert given at the Strasbourg Music Festival around 1952. I say "around" because I am guessing on the date, as most of the dates on these discs aren't entirely correct and I've had to employ guess work. However, some of my musicologist friends in France have been more than gracious in supplying correct dates (and performers where even the information provided on the discs isn't always right). So maybe they might know the correct date on this recording. In any event, it's the French Radio Symphony of Strasbourg conducted by Louis Martin in one of the lesser known pieces by the great French composer Albert Roussel; Rhapsodie Flamande.

It's not all that familiar to me and I think there is only one commercial recording currently available of the piece and prior to that, I think perhaps one or two. So this could constitute one of the first recordings by a composer whose output was rather large, but very little of it has been performed.

Further evidence there is a vast reservoir of music that hasn't been heard, not only by completely obscure composers, but many who are well known. It's all waiting for willing ears.

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