FLORENT SCHMITT Mélodies
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FLORENT SCHMITT Mélodies Sybille Diethelm soprano Annina Haug mezzo-soprano Nino Aurelio Gmünder tenor René Perler bass-baritone Fabienne Romer piano Edward Rushton piano Florent Schmitt (1870–1958) Chansons à quatre voix, Op. 39 (1905) Quatre Poèmes de Ronsard, Op. 100 (1942) 1. Véhémente [1:22] 19. Si… [2:36] Mélodies 2. Nostalgique [2:01] 20. Privilèges [1:42] 3. Naïve [2:51] 21. Ses deux yeux [2:49] 4. Boréale [1:26] 22. Le soir qu’Amour [3:02] 5. Tendre [4:12] 1–6, 11–13 & 23–25 Sybille Diethelm soprano 6. Marale [1:48] Trois Chants, Op. 98 (1943) Annina Haug mezzo soprano 1–6 & 17–18 23. Elle était venue [5:13] Nino Aurelio Gmünder tenor 1–10 & 19–22 Quatre Lieds, Op. 45 (1912) 24. La citerne des mille René Perler bass-baritone 1–6 & 14–16 7. Où vivre? [1:32] colonnes – Yéré Batan [6:07] Fabienne Romer piano 1–10, 17–18 & 23–25 8. Evocaon [1:38] 25. La tortue et le 1–6, 11–16 & 19–22 9. Fleurs décloses [2:23] lièvre – Fable [4:06] Edward Rushton piano 10. Ils ont tué trois petes filles [2:51] Kérob-Shal, Op. 67 (1924) Total playing me [72:33] 11. Octroi [3:55] 12. Star [2:16] 13. Vendredi XIII [3:38] All world premiere recordings apart Trois Mélodies, Op. 4 (1895) from Op. 98, Op. 100 & Op. 4, No. 2 14. Lied [3:11] 15. Il pleure dans mon coeur [2:57] 16. Fils de la Vierge [2:44] Deux Chansons, Op. 18 (1901) 17. Neige, coeur et lys [3:32] 18. Chanson bretonne [2:28] Florent Schmitt: Mélodies rhythms; […] aggregaons of harmonies beyond any convenon or analysis, […] While Florent Schmi’s orchestral works seeking the most paradoxical sonories, are well-represented on disc, his songs daring combinaons of mbres, by its have been seriously neglected. Some tropical orchestraons, iridescent and of are recorded here for the first me. unbelievable sumptuousness, […] by an The qualies that appeal in his larger excess of an unheard-of luxuriance of works are in abundance in this selecon refinement and preciosity [— …] the that spans his enre creave life: his music […] gives us the impression of the music’s gorgeous sensuality, bing wit, darkest barbarity.’ laconic charm, and unleashed savagery. Especially in the works of the 1920s, his It seems that Schmi was much given to composional techniques are extremely voicing his opinion from the stalls. At the complex, in some cases ancipang Salle Pleyel in November 1933, his Messiaen and the Spectralists, while his contribuon was less defensible than in affinity with the darker side of human 1913: he responded to three songs from existence is always fascinang. Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee, in the presence of the composer, who had fled Germany Schmi had publicly proclaimed his that year, by shoung ‘Vive Hitler!’ and modernist credenals at the premiere of ‘We have enough bad musicians here Le Sacre du Printemps, when he loudly without imporng German Jews!’. Schmi defended it against the bourgeois regreably later collaborated with the nay-sayers. At that stage of Stravinsky’s Vichy regime during the Second World career the admiraon was mutual; War, in his posion as Honorary Stravinsky heard La Tragédie de Salomé Vice-president of the musical secon in 1907, and received the dedicaon of of the Groupe Collaboraon. On the the full orchestral version. Stravinsky’s present album we perform works music resonated deeply in Schmi at that Schmi composed during this period. me, and his words about Le Sacre, in I admit that thus endorsing music part, might equally be a descripon of composed by a man who was his own music, or of what he wished his simultaneously shaking hands with Nazis le to right: Edward Rushton, Fabienne Romer, Sybille Diethelm, Annina Haug, Nino Aurelio Gmünder, René Perler own music to be: ‘[…] its frenec agitaon; gave me pause, and I wanted to face the […] the senseless whirl of its hallucinang responsibility of squaring admiraon for Schmi’s music, and my desire to perform Schmi on the French Wikipedia page each voice speaks its own version of the outskirts of Paris at dawn (note the bird-song it, with disgust at his polical errors of gives a balanced and unparsan view ‘Arabian poem’, all talking in counterpoint in the piano part that ancipates Messiaen judgment. I had to be absolutely convinced of this troubled aspect of his biography. with each other in an encingly, gesturally and harmonically, but not that I needn’t feel guilt about performing intoxicangly complex mesh and weave. conceptually, being descripve of a banal these songs. The conclusions I reached, Schmi was born on 28 September 1870 As if by sleight of hand, the voices sort of bird-song ‘such as there is heaps of’). offered here as a basis for debate with in the eastern French region of Lorraine. converge in longing and harmony at Impassive calm returns aer the violence those who disagree: first, Schmi’s Perhaps the proximity to the border with certain crucial moments. of the customs officer, brutally depicted in musical aesthec is diametrically opposed Germany gave rise to his affinity with the piano le hand. In Star, the sight of a to that of the Nazis, and furthermore German culture and Wagnerism, but The astonishing songs of the 1910s and brilliant shoong star provokes excitement there is no reflecon of any ansemic, whatever the reasons, I would like to 20s are suffused with darker, expressionisc in one observer, silence and despair in the an-modernist or pro-Nazi atudes in single out one instrumental work in sounds which underscore the crypc and other (note that in the final bar, all twelve his music, whether in style, allusion or connecon with our compilaon of his fathomless poetry. This is a world of notes sound in close proximity, an choice of texts. The music is always songs: the suite Reflets d’Allemagne, Op. 28, nightmares and fantascal visions, typical astonishing and obliterave gesture). In apolical. In addion, there is no further composed in 1905. Reflets is a series of of Schmi’s predilecon for weird and the four strophes of Vendredi XIII, the fatal evidence of ansemism in Schmi’s waltzes for piano duet, each movement’s savage exocism. The four Lieds Op. 45 power of four dried-out fountains brings extensive wrings and correspondence: tle the name of a German city (despite the tle, all sengs of out the worst in the four people who the infamous 1933 incident appears to (incidentally, the fih is ‘Vienne’, contemporary French poets) are saturated come into contact with them. be the sum total, and so it would be ancipang Austria’s assimilaon into in harmonies augmented and diminished kind towards Schmi to interpret this ‘Germany’ by more than thirty years). The to tonally uncategorisable breaking-point. Our programme returns for a lile relief outburst as a typically provocave Chansons à quatre voix Op. 39, also from They are all pilessly obsessed with death to some of Schmi’s earlier songs. The aempt at shocking his peers. 1905, are closely related to Reflets and the death of love. Even the archangels Mélodies Op. 4 inhabit the voluptuous Secondly, it seems unfair that many of d’Allemagne, in that they are a sequence at the close of the fourth song bring no world of late Romancism. Even if this is Schmi’s contemporaries of dubious of waltz-vignees, incorporate a piano elevated illuminaon. more familiar territory, some of Schmi’s polical leanings are unquesoningly part played by four hands (naturally giving personal and highly individual fingerprints feted and performed, even when their rise to memories of Brahms), and are The tle of the Op. 67 cycle, Kérob-Shal, are already audible, such as the descending music is much less interesng. Lastly, if sprinkled with many cross-references and is an example of Schmi’s fondness for chain of fihs, a tritone apart, that curls we confined ourselves solely to music reminiscences of Reflets. The Chansons are crypc word-games. What sounds like some through Lied, providing a stark counterpoint composed by morally unquesonable full of joy, fire and sensuousness. The tles exoc incantaon turns out simply to be a to the deliberately monotonous vocal line. people, the world would be much are all adjecves in the feminine gender, mash-up of the first syllables of the poets’ Both the other songs end on unresolved impoverished; genuine and pure referring not to female characters but names: Kerdyk, Aubry and Chalupt. In these harmonies, surely a sign of rebellion from appreciaon of music can be divorced simply agreeing with the genre ‘chanson’: dangerously alluring songs, violent acons a twenty-four-year-old composer from the biography of its composers. ‘Chanson véhémente’, ‘Chanson naïve’, are performed against a placid backdrop. uninterested in following rules. For those interested, the arcle on and so on. The fih is worth singling out: Octroi depicts a cold landscape on the In the Chansons Op. 18 we hear two sides of Elle était venue in the piano postlude. In Texts and translaons to Schmi’s personality: the melancholic La citerne aux milles colonnes, the Basilica Chansons à quatre voix, Op. 39 (1905) in Neige, Coeur et Lys, followed by the Cistern in Istanbul is impressively portrayed 1. Véhémente 1. Vehement brazen gallows-humour of the Chanson in the music. The moon of a passing boat Ah! Assez dormir, ma belle, Ah! Enough sleep, my beauty, bretonne, in which the tongue-in-cheek inspires Schmi to ecstac waves of water Ta cavale Isabelle Isabelle, your mare faux-Puccini of the urchin’s life in Paradise music.