Darius Milhaud embarked on his delightful First Symphony in the autumn of 1939 following a commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a work to celebrate its Golden Jubilee the following year. Charting an unswerving (though never entirely untroubled) course from bucolic rapture to satisfying exuberance, the symphony teems with invention and boldly imaginative orchestral colour. The pungent rhythmic force and busy textures of the scherzo are entirely characteristic, as is the questing, stately progress of the slow movement. The Basle orchestra responds in spruce, alert fashion under Alun Francis’s clear-headed direction, yet Michel Plasson at the helm of his no-less-crisply-disciplined Toulouse band distils just that crucial bit extra poignancy and atmosphere in the first and third movements especially, while the Frenchman’s generally lighter touch pays greater dividends elsewhere. The DG recording, too, is more cleanly balanced and helpfully analytical than on this otherwise very decent CPO newcomer.
Milhaud wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1947 whilst on board a Norwegian cargo steamer bound for Europe from the United States (where he and his family had been forced to flee some seven years previously). Commissioned by the French government to commemorate the centenary of the 1848 Revolution and inspired by four programmes of the composer’s own creation, the symphony comprises a defiant military pageant (‘L’insurrection’), a nobly austere funeral processional (‘Aux morts de La Republique’), a scherzo that effectively mingles serenity with unbridled joy (‘Les joies paisibles de la liberte retrouvee’), and a rousing finale (‘Commemoration 1948’) which opens and closes with a percussion-led tattoo recalling the spirit of the first movement. Next to the First Symphony, the Fourth is perhaps just a touch too loose-limbed and lacking in truly memorable ideas for its own good, and came as something of a let-down for this particular listener, despite a handful of incidental pleasures along the way. No grumbles, however, about the Basle RSO’s spirited advocacy under Francis, and anyone collecting CPO’s valuable Milhaud series needn’t hesitate.'