Help
Skip to main content

US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details

Indy: Wallenstein and other orchestral works

Lawrence Power (viola)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thierry Fischer

Indy: Wallenstein and other orchestral works
D'Indy's early three-part tone poem Wallenstein used to be fairly well known. A performance like this is likely to bring it back into circulation, full of vitality and warmth with bright brass...

Indy: Wallenstein and other orchestral works

Lawrence Power (viola)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thierry Fischer

Purchase product

CD

$17.75

In stock - only 1 left: usually despatched within 1 working day

Download

From$8.25

Download

Audio formats guide

44.1 kHz, 16 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV

$12.50

320 kbps, MP3

$8.25

This release includes a digital booklet

Stream now lossless, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit
D'Indy's early three-part tone poem Wallenstein used to be fairly well known. A performance like this is likely to bring it back into circulation, full of vitality and warmth with bright brass...

About

Vincent d’Indy is one of many great nineteenth-century composers whose reputation has suffered through the vagaries of fashion. Yet his fine body of works shows an imaginatively eclectic engagement with the musical trends of his age and a significant orchestral ability greater than that of his revered teacher César Franck. This disc from Thierry Fischer and The BBC National Orchestral of Wales presents a fascinating selection of d’Indy’s orchestral works.

Wallenstein, an early and substantial programmatic work, reflects d’Indy’s love of Germany and its culture. Based on a poetic drama by Schiller about doomed love in the Thirty Years’ War, it consists of three interlinked symphonic orvertures, employing cyclic themes and other Wagnerian techniques. The superbly poetic symphonic poem Saugefleurie is also a programmatic work. Although the influence of Wagner is again apparent, the music is characteristically French in its sonorous refinement and clear luminous orchestration. Two charming and brilliantly conceived single-movement works for solo viola and orchestra showcase the talents of Hyperion artist Lawrence Power.

Awards and reviews

March 2009

D'Indy's early three-part tone poem Wallenstein used to be fairly well known. A performance like this is likely to bring it back into circulation, full of vitality and warmth with bright brass and energetic strings in… Saugefleurie, a free-flowing fairytale tragedy, has wondrous scoring for strings... Lawrence Power as viola soloist has the measure of two works that stress lyricism rather than virtuosity. He responds generously to the passages of hushed intensity in the Choral varié...

2010

Here's another rewarding d'Indy anthology courtesy of Hyperion, which finds Thierry Fischer obtaining commendably spruce and bright-eyed results from his BBC Welsh forces.
The lengthiest (and earliest) offering here is Wallenstein. Begun in 1870 but not completed until 1881, it's a highly ambitious 37-minute trilogy based on Schiller's eponymous drama and reveals the budding composer as an unabashed acolyte of Liszt and Wagner. Fortunately the melodic invention (and its cyclical deployment) is as striking as it is satisfying (even on a first hearing the tunes stick in the memory), as is the ripe, unclotted orchestration – d'Indy clearly knew his Tristan, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung inside out.
The 1884 tone-poem Saugefleurie distils a most touching, fairy-tale charm (the music depicting the royal hunt readily calls to mind Franck's Le chasseur maudit of two years earlier), and once again d'Indy handles his outsize orchestral forces with conspicuous skill. Both the Op 19 Lied (written in the same year as Saugefleurie) and 1903 Choral varié prove very fetching discoveries, especially when Lawrence Power plays with selfless dedication, sense of poetry and lustrous tone.
A toothsome and notably enterprising collection, this, with splendidly ample and atmospheric sound to match.

April 2009

…Thierry Fischer obtaining commendably spruce and bright-eyed results from his BBC Welsh forces. Both the Op 19 Lied (written in the same year as Saugefleurie) and 1903 Choral varié prove very fetching discoveries, especially when Lawrence Power plays with the selfless dedication, sense of poetry and lustrous tone... A toothsome and notably enterprising collection, this, with splendidly ample and atmospheric sound to match. A confident recommendation seems in order.

8th February 2009

D’Indy (1851-1931) is one of those composers at once famous and barely known. His music is rarely heard at concerts, though he is an established classic who also had considerable influence as a pedagogue. These works make a good introduction to his post-Wagnerian art. The substantial triptych of overtures, Wallenstein, re-creates Schiller’s historical drama of the same name. The first, Le camp de Wallenstein, has a jollity belying its Thirty Years’ War setting, and there are attractive corners in all three. Choral varié and Lied are concertante works in which, respectively, the saxophone and cello solos are replaced by viola, played by Lawrence Power with his customary seductiveness.
View download progress