Review: Neeme Järvi conducts Ibert
Except for his Debussyesque Escales (Ports of Call), I’ve long regarded Jacques Ibert (known as “Jackie Bear” in Britain) as a sort of fellow traveller (along with Jean Françaix), with Les Six. He’s more talented than five of them, but without Poulenc’s genius for laconic glitter and Parisian chic. This well-filled CD (over 80 minutes – why can’t everyone be that generous?) gives a more rounded survey of Ibert’s oeuvre. The Divertissement (1930), which cemented Ibert’s reputation as a musical farceur, was adapted from a play called The Italian Straw Hat and is perhaps more sardonic than the usual Satieesque Keystone Cops-style slapstick romp, and none the worse for that. Escales (inspired by Ibert’s experiences during naval service in the First World War) is well played and, here, I must single out the lovely, sinuous oboe playing in the Tunis-Nefta movement – so different from the pinched, vinegary sound we used to hear from this orchestra in the Ansermet days. The reading is somewhat ‘northern’ and matter of fact rather than radiating Mediterranean languor, as in Charles Munch’s or Stokowski’s legendary readings. The main discovery here is the Symphonic Suite, relocated to Paris from a play originally set in South…