Koechlin: Les Bandar-Log; Offrandre Musicale: SWRSO Stuttgart/Holliger | CD review

Heinz Holliger's crusade on behalf of the music of Charles Koechlin continues with this coupling of what is perhaps his best-known orchestral piece with one of the strangest of his late works. Les Bandar-Log is part of a cycle of symphonic poems based on Kipling's Jungle Book, completed in 1940. It's a 20-minute scherzo that depicts the monkeys Kipling characterises in his book as vain fashion victims. Koechlin's score touches on a range of early 20th-century styles, from Debussyan impressionism to 12-note technique, but somehow welds all the tongue-in-cheek references into a dazzling whole. The Offrandre Musicale sur le Nom de Bach, meanwhile, could hardly be more different. It's a collection of 12 pieces including organ, piano and ondes Martenot solos, as well as works for quirky ensembles and for an orchestra of 106 players, on the BACH theme, which was inspired by Bach's Musical Offering but never descends into baroque pastiche. It's a cranky, sometimes extraordinary work, which had been performed in its entirety only once before Holliger conducted it in Stuttgart last year, from which this recording is taken. Les Bandar-Log, though, is the main reason for acquiring this disc.