Florent Schmitt: Salammbô, Three Orchestral Suites, Op. 76 Music Composed for the Pierre Marodon Film, 1925 Orchestre National d'Ile de France / Jacques Mercier

Florent Schmitt really only wrote three great pieces. They are the Tragedy of Salome, Psalm 47 and these three suites from a film score for the silent movie, Salammbo. Avoid the quintet. There is a fine recording of the first two works mentioned here on Apex; Marek Janowski conducts. As for Salammbo, I enjoyed hearing it. The music is definitely lush and exotic. If you want to hear a few more examples of Schmitt's music, try the four pieces conducted by Leif Segerstam with the Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic on a Marco Polo recording. If they sound like some Hollywood film scores, that is because Hollywood composers ripped off Schmitt's music and the works of many other composers. The Penguin Guide highly recommended the Marco Polo recording in 1996, but I would purchase The Tragedy of Salome, Psalm 47 and Salammmbo first. The three of them are very impressive.

This is one heck of a film score. It's very interesting and atmospheric music. In fact, it really could be an extended symphonic suite -- which is in fact what Schmitt did in extracting three suites from the full film score (about 55 minutes' worth). For those who know this composer's Salome ballet (the full-orchestra version premiered in 1912), you'll recognize a lot of the same flavor here. But the work is actually closer to the incidental music Schmitt composed for Andre Gide's adaptation of Shakespeare's play Antony & Cleopatra, which he completed in 1921. That score appeared briefly in the late 1980s on a now super-rare Cybelia CD, and hopefully will be issued again -- maybe by Marco Polo/Naxos which I notice has been reissuing some items from the old Cybelia catalogue.But you can't go wrong with Salammbo, either. The orchestra is spot-on in this difficult-to-play music, and the chorus makes an important contribution in the third suite -- music that roughly corresponds to the end of the movie. This CD is tough to track down, especially in the United States. But it's well-worth the effort.

This is the one of the most impressive scores by Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) that I've heard so far. Schmitt was a close friend of Ravel, but his music has, I think, closer affinities with Rimsky-Korsakov and early Stravinsky; occasionally, one discerns the influence of Debussy and Chabrier, but Schmitt's music has a distinctly personal flavour.Schmitt composed the music for a 1925 film version of Flaubert's "Salammbo". And while both the film and the music were forgotten (this is probably the first recording of the three suites Schmitt extracted from the film music), the music richly deserves this superlative performance from Jacques Mercier and the Orchestre-National d'Ile de France! Lovers of late-Romantic scores should be grateful for the revival of the suites - a real find!The music is somewhat reminiscent of "La Tragedie de Salome" and the music from 3'37 (track 1) brings to mind Schmitt's "Dionysiaques", but the lightness and subtlety of some of the scoring (such as from around 4'00 from the same track) is something unique to this score. Indeed, the thematic invention, rhythmic verve and brilliance of orchestration in these three suites are at a far higher level than in many of Schmitt's other scores that I know. Florent Schmitt can be sometimes a very disappointing composer, but this is Schmitt at his best, superbly performed and recorded. Strongly recommended!!