FLORENT SCHMITT (1870-1958): Antoine et Cléopâtre, Op. 69, Le Palais hanté, Op. 49.

Description: If the Schmitt series on the Timpani label was too expensive for you, here’s the composer’s 46-minute 1920 score which originated in incidental music for a production of Shakespeare's play which is organized in a set of six tableaux whose titles are Antoine et Cléopatre (in which the motifs of each character are introduced - Cleo dark, intense and threatening, Tony bright clear fanfare-like material), Le Camp de Pompée (a brief interlude), Le Bataille d'Actium (wide-screen battle action), Nuit au palais de la reine (dripping with languid heat and oriental mystery), Orgie et danses (making Salomé look like a Catholic schoolgirl) and Le Tombeau de Cléopatre (a noble and magnificent funeral oration). This is unmatched by anything else you've heard by this composer. The Poe-inspired "Haunted Palace" of 1904, a dark, haunted piece which partakes of the decadent stream of French artistic consciousness then current, fusing it with the form of the Lisztian tone-poem. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; JoAnn Falletta.