Albert Roussel - Symphony No. 1 "Le poème de la forêt", Op. 7 (1906)

Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (5 April 1869 – 23 August 1937) was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period. His early works were strongly influenced by the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while he later turned toward neoclassicism.

Symphony No. 1 in D minor ("Le poème de la forêt"), Op. 7 (1906)
Dedicated to Alfred Cortot

1. Forêt d'hiver
2. Renouveau (5:13)
3. Soir d'été (12:55)
4. Faunes et dryades (21:18)

Orchestre National de France conducted by Charles Dutoit

Description by Adrian Corleonis [-]
Forced by ill-health to give up his naval career at 25, Roussel's late start as a composer is well known. Touching the preliminaries with Eugène Gigout, he began studies with Vincent d'Indy in 1898 at the latter's newly founded Schola Cantorum, where he faced a dauntingly thorough course which would occupy him for a decade. D'Indy was quick to recognize ability, appointing Roussel professor of counterpoint in 1902, and acknowledging him as a creative artist.

When d'Indy received the symphonic poem Renouveau in 1905, he remarked to Marcel Labey, "Roussel has sent me an utterly delightful orchestral piece that is still in progress; if he weren't so distrustful of himself and could really let himself go, he could do some quite splendid things!" Such lack of confidence is difficult to credit, given the expressive power of works such as Résurrection (1903), a "symphonic prelude" after Tolstoy's novel, or the high finish, originality, surefire verve, and glowing tonal palette of the Divertissement for piano and winds, composed in 1906, as he was engaged with his Symphony No. 1.

Nonetheless, the symphony's composition slowly proceeded, and with misgivings. Soir d'été, completed in October 1904, was heard at one of Alfred Cortot's lectures -- "hearings" of works by young composers given at the Nouveau-Théâtre -- on December 15. While Roussel gained some assurance regarding the effectiveness of his orchestral writing, another symphonic movement, Vendanges (Harvest), was rejected and destroyed after performance at the lectures on April 18, 1905. Renouveau was completed in July 1905, and Forêt d'hiver in June 1906. With three movements in hand suggesting the round of the seasons, Roussel joined Forêt d'hiver and Renouveau in a single movement -- the former as an atmospheric introduction, the latter in proper first-movement sonata form. Soir d'été is a ternary adagio showing strong affinities with d'Indy's Jour d'été à la montagne, composed at the same time. Throughout, the orchestral writing is evocative, pictorial, and exquisitely poetic, if not highly original -- Roussel exercising up-to-the-minute craft with a deft touch. Only in the final movement, "Faunes et dryades," completed in September 1906, does one feel Roussel "really let himself go." A rondo, the dance-like and suavely propulsive returning portions enclose reminiscences from previous movements to realize a cyclic design, the Holy Grail of form chez d'Indy and Schola adherents. The work's premiere was given at the Concerts Populaires in Brussels on March 22, 1908, conducted by Sylvain Dupuis. D'Indy led the Paris premiere on February 7, 1909, with the Lamoureux Orchestra.