André Jolivet was a contemporary of
Messiaen; both composers were part of a short-lived group called Jeune France that rejected the exotic and often jazzy accents of French neo-classicism in favor of weightier ideas, including serialism.
Jolivet, along with all the other Jeune France composers except
Messiaen, has been largely forgotten. That's too bad, for the string/orchestra works of
Jolivet heard here have a sensuous surface appeal that draws the listener into their conceptual and numerological complexities. These performances by the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie (Regional Orchestra of Savoy) under Lithuanian-Chinese-Australian conductor
Mark Foster were originally issued in 1994; their reissue is welcome, for recordings and performances of
Jolivet's music are still rare. The opening Symphonie pour cordes (or Symphony for strings) is tough going for the listener; when annotator Harry Halbreich argues that "the future has yet to catch up with its boldness," one has to ask just how such prophecy, looking many decades forward, could be possible. Things pick up after that, however, and listeners who immerse themselves in
Jolivet's dense string textures will be rewarded with a spacious mysticism that somewhat resembles that of
Messiaen, but achieves it by completely different means, more dissonant and more inclined toward polyphony. Try Yin-Yang (track 4), a work commissioned by
Mstislav Rostropovich and featuring unusual and subtly evolving combinations of a cello with higher strings, often playing in overtones.
Jolivet rejected
Stravinsky's thoroughgoing influence on French music, and with it
Stravinsky's rhythmic élan. So it's hard to fault a symphony programmer who chooses
Stravinsky instead, but these involved, contemplative string pieces are good to have in the catalog once again.