These latest releases in Warner Classics’ long-running ICON series highlight two conductors Georges Prêtre and Armin Jordan. They were born just eight years apart from each other – Prêtre in France in 1924 and Jordan in Switzerland 1932 – and both have a particular distinction in French music, but their careers followed very different paths.
Armin Jordan held conducting posts at the opera houses of Zurich, St Gallen and Basel and with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (1973-1985) and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1985-1997). Both these orchestras feature strongly in this ICON collection, which comprises entirely music by composers of the French school, both famous and lesser-known – Debussy, Ravel, Franck, Fauré, Chabrier, Dukas, Chausson, Lekeu, Rabaud, Delage, Jaubert. The set includes a wealth of rarely-heard/rarely-recorded works alongside repertoire favourites, and among the soloists who feature on the set are sopranos Jessye Norman and Felicity Lott and pianist François-René Duchâble.
Armin Jordan’s son, the conductor Philippe Jordan, is music director of the Opéra national de Paris and also a Warner Classics artist. He has provided a note on his father for the booklet for this ICON box.
Both collections include a number of recordings that have never before appeared on CD. On the Prêtre set, works by Saint-Saëns, Milhaud, Poulenc, Dutilleux, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, Dvořák, Berg, Harsányi and Gershwin; on the Jordan set, works by Chausson, Fauré, Ravel and Lekeu.
Armin Jordan held conducting posts at the opera houses of Zurich, St Gallen and Basel and with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (1973-1985) and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1985-1997). Both these orchestras feature strongly in this ICON collection, which comprises entirely music by composers of the French school, both famous and lesser-known – Debussy, Ravel, Franck, Fauré, Chabrier, Dukas, Chausson, Lekeu, Rabaud, Delage, Jaubert. The set includes a wealth of rarely-heard/rarely-recorded works alongside repertoire favourites, and among the soloists who feature on the set are sopranos Jessye Norman and Felicity Lott and pianist François-René Duchâble.
Armin Jordan’s son, the conductor Philippe Jordan, is music director of the Opéra national de Paris and also a Warner Classics artist. He has provided a note on his father for the booklet for this ICON box.
Both collections include a number of recordings that have never before appeared on CD. On the Prêtre set, works by Saint-Saëns, Milhaud, Poulenc, Dutilleux, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, Dvořák, Berg, Harsányi and Gershwin; on the Jordan set, works by Chausson, Fauré, Ravel and Lekeu.
