Measha Brueggergosman with Ian Munro Wednesday 21 March 2018
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MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE PRESENTS 1 MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN WITH IAN MUNRO WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2018 GREAT PERFORMERS CONCERT SERIES 2018 2 ‘Everything she sings is radiated by an instinctive musicality, breadth of phrasing and generosity of spirit: here is someone evidently singing for love not money and she has the gift of making the music glow.’ THE TELEGRAPH UK SOPRANO MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN CANADA IAN MUNRO PIANO AUSTRALIA WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2018, 7.30PM Elisabeth Murdoch Hall 6.45PM Free pre-concert talk with Andrea Katz DURATION One hour & 50-minutes including a 20-minute interval This concert is being recorded by ABC Classic FM for a deferred broadcast. Melbourne Recital Centre acknowledges the people of the Kulin nation on whose land this concert is being presented. SERIES PARTNER PEFC Certified This product is from sustainably LEGAL FRIENDS OF managed forests and controlled sources. MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE www.pfc.org PROGRAM MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN MAURICE RAVEL INTERVAL 20-minutes (1875-1937) Cinq mélodies populaires greques GUSTAV MAHLER Chanson de la mariée (1860-1911) Là-bas, vers l’église Des Knaben Wunderhorn – selection Quel galant m’est comparable Rheinlegendchen Chanson des cueilleuses de lentisques Verlor’ne Müh’! Tout gai! Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen 4 Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963) XAVIER MONTSALVATGE Violon (from Fiançailles pour rire, S 101) (1912-2002) C’est ainsi que tu es (Métamorphoses, S 121) Cinco Canciones Negras Voyage à Paris (Banalités S 107) Cuba dentro de un piano Hôtel (Banalités) Punto de habanera Chévere MAURICE RAVEL Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito Shéhérazade Canto negro Asie La flûte enchantée WILLIAM BOLCOM L’indifférent (b. 1938) Cabaret Songs – selection Surprise The Total Stranger in the Garden Toothbrush Time The Song of Black Max George Amor GREAT PERFORMERS 2018 ABOUT THE MUSIC As the 20th century dawned in Paris a number at peace. In ‘Quel galant’ the suitor, festooned of like-minded young men formed a club in pistols and sword, asks his lady who can called the Société des Apaches. They argued compare to him. ‘Chanson des cueilleuses de about new trends in the arts and philosophy lentisques’ reflects the songs’ origins on the and attended performances of new works en island of Chios, as the women gathering mastic masse. Among the members were Maurice sing of an unattainably beautiful young man. Ravel and two wordsmiths with whom he The cycle ends with the joyous abandon of would collaborate on significant works in ‘Tout gai!’ the years before World War I. One of these, 5 the critic and musicologist Michel-Dimitri Ravel’s younger contemporary, Francis Poulenc Calvocoressi was born to Greek parents in was one of the group known as Les Six, who France in 1877, and his particular passion was had relatively little in common beyond a kind Russian music, especially that of Mussorgsky of arch neo-classicism formed partly from (whose Pictures at an Exhibition Ravel would their admiration of Stravinsky and partly in so superbly orchestrate). In 1904 musicologist reaction to the music of Debussy. Poulenc Pierre Aubry was to lecture on the ‘songs of began writing melodies, or art-songs, with oppressed peoples’ – namely the Greeks and works such his Rapsodie nègre as early as 1917, Armenians, then both Christian nations within when his career was first taking off. The bulk the Ottoman Empire – and asked Ravel to make of his music in this genre, however, dates from piano accompaniments to five songs, translated after 1935, when he began working with the by Calvocoressi from Greek into French. Ravel baritone Pierre Bernac on a regular basis. The subsequently replaced three of the originals composer was repeatedly drawn to the work of and the new set premiered in 1906. certain poets of the symboliste-surrealist bent, among them Paul Eluard, Guillaume Apollinaire In ‘Chanson de la mariée’ (later renamed Le and Louis Aragon, and particularly Louise de Réveil de la mariée) the bridegroom’s ardent Vilmorin. Poulenc set her Fiançailles pour rire (A voice sounds through morning calm as he light-hearted betrothal) for soprano and piano calls his ‘pretty partridge’ to wake so they can ‘so that I could more often turn my thoughts marry. ‘Là-bas, vers l’église’ gently evokes the towards Louise de Vilmorin, imprisoned in churchyard where the bravest of the dead lie her castle in Hungary for God knows how MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN long’ during 1939. (Vilmorin had made one of In 1889 the 14-year-old Maurice Ravel had had several ill-advised marriages, this time to a two defining musical experiences: he heard Hungarian count.). The fifth song of the cycle, Javanese gamelan music at Paris’ Exposition ‘Violon’ likens the instrument and its player Universelle, and he heard Rimsky-Korsakov to a mismatched, but loving couple (‘with conducting his own Capriccio espagnol. Like his unrecognized accents’), in music of vaguely near contemporary, Debussy, Ravel would use Baroque dotted rhythms that supports a long ‘oriental’ features in a number of later works; he vocal line. would also assimilate the Russian composer’s 6 brilliant orchestration. In 1903, Ravel composed Bernac, Poulenc reported, who was ‘envious his song cycle Shéhérazade to poems by Tristan of these melodies - Fiançailles pour rire, which Klingsor (the hyper-Wagnerian pseudonym of were impossible for him to sing, solicited some Arthur Leclère, who was also a member of the masculine poems from the poetess’ and Vilmorin Apaches). Two years earlier he had produced obliged with the Métamorphoses, set to music his Shéhérazade Overture, inevitably inviting in 1943. With improvised–sounding prelude (unflattering) comparison with Rimsky- and postlude, the second song, ‘This is how Korsakov’s tone poem of the same name; the you are’ is suffused with nostalgia, as the singer song cycle (originally for piano but very soon reconstructs in detail a woman he knew from orchestrated) responds with great intensity to memories of her hair, shadow and whispers. the imagery of Klingsor’s three poems. These are, not surprisingly, ‘Wagnerian’ in their The 1940 Banalités sets six poems by Apollinaire. mixture of eroticism and death, especially in In his quirky waltz setting of the fifth song, the first song, ‘Asie’. An ‘oriental’ melody sets ‘Voyage à Paris’, Poulenc embodies Apollinaire’s off the singer’s yearning to see the mystic east, love of Paris and consequent contempt for underpinned by the rhythm of a ship, which anywhere else. In ‘Hôtel,’ however, the poet, still sails ‘like an immense night-bird’. She visits half asleep, just wants to sit in his hotel room, Damascus, Persia, India and China in a series of smoking as the sun comes up. Poulenc responds evocative episodes, reaching a powerful climax with music of extreme inaction. as she contemplates seeing ‘death from love or hate’. In a quiet epilogue she imagines returning home to tell her many stories. GREAT PERFORMERS 2018 The singer of the second song is a servant, for Mahler’s first four symphonies, and three were whom the melody of the flute, ‘now languid, incorporated as vocal elements in Symphonies now flighty’ is a message from her lover; in the 2, 3 and 4. third, the singer sees a beautiful androgynous young man who, as Michael Puri notes, is ‘Rheinlegendchen’ tells an enigmatic story of represented in music similar to the ‘Danse the reaper, missing his beloved, who throws légère’ that depicts Daphnis in Daphnis et Chloë. his ring in to the river where it is eaten by a fish The poet hears the youth’s ‘charming unknown that is caught and taken to the king’s table. language’, but his or her desire is thwarted by The reaper’s lover is there and recognises the 7 the young man’s languid indifference. ring and is allowed to take it back to its owner. Mahler tells the story by establishing a folky As early as 1881 Gustav Mahler had been atmosphere of Ländler (a country cousin of the inspired by the collection of German folk waltz) rhythms, but dramatically changes key poetry, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s and mood for the second half of the text. Magic Horn). The poetry had been collected and published (and extensively edited) by writers Ländler rhythms permeate ‘Verlor’ne Müh’!’, Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in a dialogue song in which a girl tries to attract the early 19th century, and its combination of her boyfriend’s attention by proposing fantastical tales told in clear, simple language various activities. In contrast to her increasing was crucial to the reform of German literature desperation, the boy becomes ever more curt. pursued by the likes of Goethe. Mahler imitated the style and subject of the poems, and the Arguably the masterpiece of the set, ‘Wo die related Grimms’ fairy tales in Das klagende schönen Trompeten blasen’, is also a dialogue, Lied, his first major work on graduating from here between a girl woken at night and her the Vienna Conservatory. Soon he returned lover outside. There is a reminder of the to the collection and set 15 poems in all; the Ländler, but the sounds of martial music – the earliest songs date from the late 1880s but the beautiful trumpets are heard in the distance. bulk of the work was done between 1892 and Mahler’s music, as much as the text, helps us 1898 and revised in 1901. Many of the melodies come to realise that the boy is a ghost of a would become important thematic elements in solider lying in the green grass house of the MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN battlefield. In ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht’ Unlike Alberti or Luján, Nicolás Guillén (1902- an innkeeper’s daughter lives on the green 1989) was Cuban, and of Afro-Caribbean meadow in the mountains, yearning for her heritage.