A distant, intimate world

After Ernest Ansermet, the legendary founder of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Armin Jordan (1932-2006) was the second great artistic personality to have a lasting influence on this orchestra in French-speaking Switzerland. Now, fifteen years after his death, a tribute CD is being released with a recording that Jordan was able to make with cellist François Guye, but which was never released.

Jordan may have been born in Lucerne, but the francophone was in his blood. He was a passionate and ardent musician and anything but a despot. Instead, he treated his orchestral musicians as equals, insisting that they all address him as a fatherly friend. And he loved music theater and opera. The Theater Basel, where he was Music Director of the Opera for almost twenty years (until 1989), was his musical home.

Jordan took over the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from Horst Stein in 1985 and remained loyal to it for twelve years. With numerous tours, for example to Japan, Belgium, Great Britain and South Korea, he consolidated the orchestra's international reputation, which he also documented with many recordings. It was not least the specific sound of the OSR that set it apart from other orchestras and made major labels sit up and take notice. Jordan's recordings were mainly released by Erato. The warm, intimate sound also characterizes the tribute CD, which begins with Ernest Bloch's Schelomo-Rhapsody (1916) and Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain (1967-70) brings together special works. However, this has now been published by Cascavelle.

You don't have to listen for long to recognize Jordan's dramaturgical power, his vivid art of presentation. Bloch's rhapsody particularly benefits from this, as it tells the drama of the dying Schelomo, who bitterly regrets the ostentatiousness of his rule. The fabulous cellist François Guye is also able to portray Schelomo with an intimately excited cantilena.

Like Ernest Ansermet, Jordan particularly cultivated the Swiss-French school with Arthur Honegger, Othmar Schoeck and Frank Martin; the music of Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy was also regularly on the OSR's programs. Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain for cello and orchestra. The recording is lucid and finely balanced in terms of chamber music. The soloist and orchestra unfold a lyrical dialogue that magically illuminates the modern colors of the work. An homage to Armin Jordan could not be more fitting.