MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Flemish Rhapsodies

There are some interesting similitudes in all these orchestral Rhapsodies - other than the fact that all of them were written in an 8-year span (from Absil 1928 to Roussel 1936), except for August de Boeck's Dahomeyan Rhapsody (1893): they are loud, rowdy, upbeat, playful, though with their brooding, tender, or dreamy moment of repose, either the first part, as in Marinus de Jong's Rhapsody, track 3, or the middle section (Michel Brusselmans' track 1, De Boeck's track 6), or alternating back and forth between both moods, as in Maurice Shoemaker's track 2 and Jean Absil's track 4; Roussel (track 5) combines a brooding introduction and a slow and somewhat sentimental middle section.