HENRI DUTILLEUX (1916-2013): Le Loup - Complete Ballet, 3 Tableaux symphoniques, 6 excerpts from the film score La Fille du Diable, 4 Mélodies for Voice and Orchestra, 3 Sonnets de Jean Cassou for Baritone and Orchestra.

Description: The main event here is the half-hour ballet score from 1953, previously only ever recorded with a small orchestra in 1954, making this for all intents and purposes a first recording. There is no synopsis - the notes tell us only that a young bride falls in love with a wolf which she believes to be her husband in altered form - but the score, symphonic in scope and as colorful as it is evocative, is plainly very pictorial while stylistically it’s got elements of both neo-romanticism and the neo-classicism of Ravel and Prokofiev. The other two purely orchestral items are excerpts of a film score (1945-46) and of music for a stage version of “Wuthering Heights” (1944-46). Each is 11 minutes long and both use the ondes Martenot - sparingly in the former and deliciously up-front in the latter. The Mélodies (1944) and Sonnets (1955) command attention both through the power and humanity of some of the poems they set and, again, by means of often magical orchestration. French-English texts. Vincent Le Texier (baritone), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire; Pascal Rophé.