In May 1924, against stiff competition from Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and Poulenc’s Les biches, Le miroir de Jesus was performed several times to packed houses at the Theatre du Vieux Colombier. It was Caplet’s last major work before his early death in 1925.
One or two small things are less than perfect in this recording. Some orchestral crescendos are timid or non-existent, and Brigitte Desnoues is less happy above E than below it. I’m sorry too that she doesn’t do anything with Caplet’s brief passage of Sprechgesang, designed as a bridge between declamation and singing in the final movement. But really that’s all. In every other respect this is an admirably accurate and spirited version of this curious masterpiece.
I say curious because it’s unlike any other work I know – in its sound world, in its moves between gaiety and pessimism, and in its matching combination of old-fashioned modality and up-to-date chromatic twinings (the latter especially in the central section, ‘The Sorrowful Mysteries’). We can detect a few traces of Debussy’s textures (Caplet had been a close friend and collaborator), of plainsong (he often visited Solesmes at the end of his life), even of Schoenbergian Expressionism (he conducted the riotous first French performance of the Five Orchestral Pieces in 1922). But the intensity and spare spirituality of the thought, together with the occasional burst of voluptuous scoring, give Le miroir a totally individual flavour. This excellent disc reminds us how much music lost by his death.'