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2285AV-Hainen_bklt v4 23/09/2013 16:27 Page 1 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer AVIE YELLOW Catalogue No. 2285 AV BLACK Job Title: Elizabeth Hainen Page Nos. AV2285 2285AV-Hainen_bklt v4 23/09/2013 16:27 Page 2 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer AVIE YELLOW Catalogue No. 2285 AV BLACK Job Title: Elizabeth Hainen Page Nos. Les Amis Claude Debussy 1862–1918 Andre Caplet 1878–1925 Danse sacrée et danse profane* Divertissements 1 Danse sacrée 4.49 10 À la française in C 4.42 2 Danse profane 5.10 11 À l’espagnole in E flat 5.44 Petite Suite arr. Elizabeth Hainen 12 Conte fantastique* 16.51 3 I. En bateau 3.54 (La Masque de la mort rouge) 4 II. Cortège 4.12 5 III. Menuet 3.35 6 IV. Ballet 3.56 Sonata for flute, viola and harp 7 I. Pastorale 6.33 8 II. Interlude 5.36 9 III. Finale 4.57 Elizabeth Hainen harp Jeffrey Khaner flute · Roberto Díaz viola *IRIS Orchestra *Michael Stern conductor Total time: 70.04 Recorded: 28 & 29 March 2013, Gould Hall, the Curtis Institute of Music; *14 February 2013, Germantown Performing Arts Center, Tennessee Producer and head recording engineer: Da-Hong Seetoo Recording engineer: Jamey Lamar for the IRIS Orchestra Assistant recording engineer: Kevin Edlin · Photographer: Amanda Stevenson Lupke Cover design: Jeremy Tilston for WLP Ltd. ൿ Les Amis: Roberto Díaz, Elizabeth Hainen and Jeffrey Khaner 2013 The copyright in this sound recording is owned by Elizabeth Hainen Ꭿ 2013 Elizabeth Hainen. www.elizabethhainen.com Marketed by Avie Records www.avie-records.com 2 3 2285AV-Hainen_bklt v4 23/09/2013 16:27 Page 3 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer AVIE YELLOW Catalogue No. 2285 AV BLACK Job Title: Elizabeth Hainen Page Nos. Introduction Les Amis I first came up with the idea of pairing the compositions of Debussy and Caplet while adjudicating ‘The angel of corrections … the Solicitor-General of oversights,’ Debussy called André Caplet in at the Lily Laskine International Harp Concours in Paris of 2008. While spending time in the Salle September 1909, after seeing his ‘perfect and accomplished’ two-piano arrangement of his orchestral Gaveau, a jewel-box of a little concert hall built in 1907, I contemplated these two men, devoted showpiece Rondes de printemps. For, in the meticulous and imaginative Caplet, Debussy found his friends and colleagues, and how their day-to-day life resembled our lives as performing musicians perfect proofreader, collaborator, transcriber, conductor and orchestrator. It was, so to speak, a match today. Going to concerts, museums and cafes, discussing the frustrating rhetoric in politics, made in heaven because Caplet excelled at all the things Debussy disliked doing, as well as being a comparing premiere status on ocean liners and how to cash in points to claim the upgrade… well, I gifted composer in his own right. In turn, Debussy’s new approaches to form, texture and rhythm am digressing. But in all seriousness their lives were similar to most artists today. Both composers influenced the evolution of Caplet’s own remarkable compositions, in which the undercurrent of were instrumental in utilizing the harp’s idiomatic colours and subsequently influenced the Catholic mysticism came more to the fore after Debussy’s death in 1918, when the effects of gassing important position of the harp in the 20th-century orchestra. This recording is the first to exclusively during the First World War forced Caplet to curtail his conducting activities. pair Caplet with Debussy. Their relationship is evident in all of these works I have recorded. Except Moreover, after their first meeting in 1906, the two composers quickly became close friends, for one other recording from over 20 years ago, Caplet’s work based on The Masque of the Red Death which was by no means always the case with the reserved and enigmatic Debussy. Caplet also became has not been showcased in his original conception, that being full string orchestra and harp. a close confidant both of Debussy’s second wife, Emma, and his beloved daughter, Chouchou. As While the works of Debussy have been recorded often, the compositions of Caplet go virtually ‘her first fiancé’ at the age of three, Caplet wrote a beautiful duet in 1909 for her to play on just the unknown. His early career was given a jump-start when, at the age of 23, he was awarded First Prize white notes of the piano, while her father played the surrounding harmonies in D flat major. in France’s most distinguished musical composition concours, the Prix de Rome, in 1901, demoting a Both composers had a lifelong fascination with the macabre Tales of Mystery and Imagination certain Maurice Ravel into third place. His virtuosity caught the attention of Debussy and shortly by the American inventor of the detective story, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). In Debussy it took after the two became devoted friends. Debussy held Caplet in high esteem, and entrusted Caplet with the form of two incomplete operas – The Fall of the House of Usher and The Devil in the Belfry – much arranging and conducting of his own music. Caplet was a perfectionist as both a conductor based on Charles Baudelaire’s celebrated translations as the Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (1857). and composer. La masque de la mort rouge resembles a score to a Hitchcock thriller. The work is based These projects occupied Debussy intermittently from 1890 to his death, often at the expense of his on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story and conjures up a gory profile of some kind of serial killer. His other compositions. music is captivating, using forward-thinking harmonies and tonality. I have often performed this Caplet’s Légende (after one of the Histoires extraordinaires of Edgar Poe, The Masque of the Red work in the original scoring for string orchestra as well as the rendition for string quartet, but Death) for chromatic harp and orchestra dates from 1908, and was later carefully transformed into December of 2011 I finally had the opportunity to pair this work for the first time with Debussy’s the Conte fantastique for pedal harp or piano and string quartet of 1923. But the less frequently heard Danse sacrée and Danse profane. Michael Stern, the fantastic American conductor and my dear friend, ‘symphonic study’ with orchestra must have occupied a special place in Caplet’s affections, for he conducted me in these works with the IRIS Orchestra, a dynamic ensemble and one of the finest in dedicated it to his mother. The dramatic and intense slower sections portraying death itself, ‘the the US. We hoped that this would make an incredible recording and with Michael’s experience of ghastly spectre’ arriving ‘like a thief in the night,’ show Caplet at his most texturally imaginative, conducting in Paris for many years he brings a depth to both works that I had never encountered. powerful and, at times, sheerly terrifying. The faster sections depict the orgiastic ball thrown by a I hope you enjoy Les Amis and share these imaginative works with your friends. hedonistic young prince in a time of famine and pestilence, in which the dancers whirl ever more Ꭿ Elizabeth Hainen, 2013 feverishly as midnight approaches and the plague of the red death arrives to claim Prince Prospero 4 5 2285AV-Hainen_bklt v4 23/09/2013 16:27 Page 4 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer AVIE YELLOW Catalogue No. 2285 AV BLACK Job Title: Elizabeth Hainen Page Nos. and his thousand companions – memorably announced by spine-chilling knocks on the harpist’s and concert item that it led to numerous arrangements during his lifetime. Debussy thanked Henri soundboard. In the ecstasy of the dancing we can hear an anticipation of Ravel’s La Valse and Busser for his ‘ingenious orchestration’ in 1907 and Debussy aficionados may be tempted to compare certainly the harmonic influence of Debussy. Although Debussy and Caplet both wrote pieces this with the present arrangement by Elizabeth Hainen. It may help listeners to know that the opening featuring Pleyel’s new chromatic harp, invented by Gustave Lyon (with its two rows of strings theme of the Menuet was derived from a setting of Banville’s Fête galante of 1882 and that Debussy representing the black and white notes on the piano), it never became a serious rival to the thought sufficiently highly of this early suite to conduct it himself in Vienna in November 1910. Érard pedal harp and disappeared from the concert platform during the 1920s. Debussy’s Pleyel Ꭿ Robert Orledge, 2013 commission in 1904 produced the ritualistic and modal Danse sacrée, based on a theme by Francesco de Lacerda, and the charming, waltz-like Danse profane. Although the harp forms an indispensable part of Debussy’s orchestral sound, it was Caplet who Einleitung was the most interested in its virtuosic and technical potential. This is nowhere more evident than in the two Divertissements that received their first performance by their dedicatee, Micheline Kahn, at Der Gedanke, Kompositionen von Debussy und Caplet zu koppeln, kam mir zum ersten Mal 2008 in the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris on 15 May 1924, less than a year before Caplet’s early death. Paris, als ich Mitglied der Jury beim internationalen Concours de harpe Lily Laskine war. Während der While the glistening À la française is all treble lightness in its cascades, À l’espagnole comes down to Zeit in der Salle Gaveau, einem Juwel von einem kleinen Konzertsaal aus dem Jahre 1907, dachte ich earth in Caplet’s own ‘interrupted serenade’ as an imaginative equivalent to Debussy’s perfumes of über diese beiden Männer, treuen Freunde und Kollegen nach, und auch darüber, wie ihr Alltag dem a Spanish night with strumming guitars and popular dances.