Concert Maurice Jaubert

This double album presents a restored version of the recording of a Maurice Jaubert (1900 - 1940) concert music presented in 1952 in Paris and broadcast on French state radio. It is a tribute to this composer and a war hero who had distinguished himself in writing concert music as much as in the very different area of film music.

On the cinema side, Maurice Jaubert collaborated with the greatest directors of his time: Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier, René Clair and, above all, Jean Vigo, who also died prematurely after directing two gems of French cinema: Zéro de conduite and L’Atalante. The influence of Jaubert music on subsequent generations of European composers is considerable. François Truffaut reused his concert music for the four films he made between 1975 and 1978, Small Change, The Man Who Loved Women, The Story of Adele H and The Green Room,

The conducting and interpretation featured here are top notch. Conductor Jean Martinon maintains a fast, energetic tempo and the vocal soloists are tremendous. The live performance brings a special feeling of authenticity which compensates for the technical limitations of the time.

Long before the expression world music appeared in the early 1960s, Maurice Jaubert addressed the genre with his Géographies. This mixture of swinging rhythms and sounds inspired by the traditional music of Africa and Asia could only have surprised French listeners in the 1930s and still sounds fresh today.

The Three Psalms for a Time of War, for women’s chorus with piano and harp accompaniment, were composed shortly before the Composer died on the front in 1940. Can we speak of premonition? These songs are stripped and solemn, without sinking into self-pity; they express a Judea-Christian resignation to the ultimate sacrifice of one’s own life in order to beat evil forces.

The notion of sacrifice establishes a connection with the two most important works on this program. The operatic symphony Joan of Arc, the emblematic, martyred figure of Catholic France, carries an overwhelming emotion. Despite the gravity of the story, the melodic line always remains fluid and seductive, admirably served here by the interpretation of soprano Jacqueline Brumaire.

The Cantata for Easter Time is equally fervent but more serene as it contains a message of hope through the Resurrection of Christ. Although the form of this work is closer to the liturgical composition model inherited from the Baroque era, it shows a lot of freshness and originality, even audacity.

Concert Maurice Jaubert comes with an 8-page color booklet with liner notes by executive producer Clément Fontaine