Fata Morgana Seven Songs in Folk Style 1
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Fata Morgana Song by Pavel Haas Anita Watson soprano Anna Starushkevych mezzo soprano Nicky Spence tenor James Platt bass Navarra Quartet Lada Valešová piano RES10183 Sedm písní v lidovém tónu, Op. 18 (1940) Fata Morgana Seven Songs in Folk Style 1. Což je víc! [1:05] Song by Pavel Haas (1899–1944) 2. Dárek z lásky [3:08] 3. Krotká holubička [1:30] 4. Zrušení slibu [2:41] 5. Přípověď [1:20] Anita Watson soprano 6. Slzy a vzdychání [3:47] 7. Statečný jonák [1:39] Anna Starushkevych mezzo soprano Nicky Spence tenor Fata Morgana, Op. 6 (1923) James Platt bass Rabíndranáth Thákur, Zahradník Part I Navarra Quartet 8. Když šla kolem mě rychlými kroky [7:27] Lada Valešová piano & artistic director 9. Noc je noc plného máje [8:46] 10. Mé srdce pták houštin [3:58] Part II 11. Má milá, srdce mé touží [4:09] 12. Jsi oblak večerní [6:29] Čínské písně, Op. 4 (1921) Chinese Songs 13. Smutek [2:43] 14. Na řece Jo-Yeh [2:37] 15. Jarní déšť [2:29] Čtyři písně na slova čínské poezie (1944) Four Songs on Chinese Poetry About Lada Valešová: 16. Zaslech jsem divoké husy... [2:52] 17. V bambusovém háji [2:27] ‘You have to take your hat off to someone who can plan a recital CD 18. Daleko měsíc je od domova [6:16] with the imaginative insight of the investigative musicologist 19. Probděná noc [3:57] and then execute it with such musicianly sensitivity’ International Piano Magazine Total playing time [69:29] Fata Morgana: Song by Pavel Haas his imprisonment in Terezín in the 1940s. It is particularly notable, that this album contains In the case of Pavel Haas (1899–1944), a the first commercially available recording of number of factors conspired to push the Haas’s Fata Morgana, Op. 6 (1923). music of a highly accomplished composer to the verge of oblivion. As a student of The Seven Songs in Folk Style, Op. 18 are best Leoš Janáček and a life-long resident of understood as a series of stylised musical Brno, the capital of Moravia, Haas had images, portraying different aspects of love, limited opportunity to have his music its joys and sorrows. Here the composer performed in the Czechoslovak capital utilised his mastery of musical Prague, or abroad, and to build a characterisation, combining sharp wit with reputation on a national or an international emotional sensitivity. Listening to the cycle, level. During the Nazi occupation of few would suspect that this charming work Czechoslovakia, the composer was was conceived during the times when the banned from performance, imprisoned Nazis were tightening their grip on occupied in Terezín and eventually killed in Czechoslovakia. In fact, the Seven Songs Auschwitz because of his Jewish origins. were composed between two major Little was done in the following works – the Suite for Oboe and Piano (1939) Communist era to revive his musical and the unfinished Symphony (1940–41) – legacy. It was not until the 1990s that both of which are infused with patriotism, Haas’s music became more broadly faith and defiance. Apparently, the composer available to scholars, performers, and turned to František Ladislav Čelakovský’s audiences (both at home and abroad) (1799–1852) paraphrases of Czech folk poetry through modern editions and recordings. to seek refuge in the idyllic world of the past. In the present day, it seems safe to say that Fata Morgana, Op. 6 was the first major work Haas’s music has been brought back to life, composed by Haas after he finished his and this new release makes a significant studies with Leoš Janáček in 1922. Scored contribution to the growing recognition for tenor and a piano quintet, Fata Morgana of Haas’s work. It contains four song cycles sets to music five poems from The Gardener composed in various stages of Haas’s career by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore from the time of his studies with Janáček (1861–1941). Haas’s setting of texts by in the early 1920s to the sorrowful years of Tagore demonstrates the composer’s interest in exotic literature, which was a new source the first vocal entry, describing with lyrical performers that the composition’s final scoring for the piano carries the soloist from of inspiration in the early-twentieth century. warmth the ‘fleeting touch’ of love. sustained unison is to gradually decline in one scene to another. He also may have been influenced by dynamics from fff to a ‘dying and vanishing pp’, Janáček, who had recently set Tagore’s The second poem, by contrast, portrays the to indicate, in Haas’s own words, that: ‘the The final song opens with the ‘raindrop’ poetry to music in The Wandering Madman agonising restlessness of the protagonist vision dissolves into nothing’. staccato motive in the piano, which (1922). intoxicated by love. Like a wild animal, he anticipates the main theme of the poem: pursues the elusive ‘image of desire’. Haas composed Chinese Songs, Op. 4, the the celebration of spring rain and its The five poems that Haas selected portray Haas’s imaginative use of rhythm illustrates first of his two song cycles based on Chinese rejuvenating power. Slow moving passages the torments and pleasures of erotic desire, the chase: several distinct ostinato patterns, poetry, while he was still a student in Leoš juxtaposed with the lively ostinato rhythms evoked in the protagonist by an ephemeral each in a different metre, accompany the Janáček’s composition class. In fact, Janáček in music, correspond with the poem’s vision of a lover. Haas chose an unusual tenor’s rapid declamation, interspersed himself made several alterations to Haas’s transition from a dark, rainy night to the scoring for tenor, piano, and a string irregularly with groups of percussive col original score, concerning mainly details of bright shining morning of the following day. quartet to broaden the palette of legno strokes. word settings. instrumental colours to reflect the sensual Two decades later, Haas was now a prisoner eroticism of Tagore’s poem. Fata Morgana The third poem articulates the longing for The first song invites the listener to meditate in the concentration camp of Terezín. Forced defies traditional categories of form and union with a lover, which seems to promise on the ruins of an ancient civilisation; the to abandon his wife and his little daughter, genre, standing between a piece of quasi-religious redemption or mystical splendour of its legendary past and the he also saw his father die in the camp. Under instrumental chamber music and a song transfiguration. Haas employs repetitive, transience of human monuments. Haas’s these radically different circumstances, Haas cycle. Extensive instrumental preludes, static harmonies in the piano to convey a music conveys the atmosphere of mystery turns once more to the poetry of ancient interludes, and postludes are combined sense of timelessness and infinite profundity. with slow, stately gong-like chimes in the China for his Four Songs on Chinese Poetry. with three settings of poems in the first These wide-spanning harmonies resonate piano’s low register. These may be associated He chooses four poems from the book movement, and two in the second. with the poem’s sublime image of ‘the with death or the passing of time. In either The New Songs of Ancient China by the Czech kingdom of stars’ and its ‘lonely immensity’. case, they inspire reverential silence and poet and translator Bohumil Mathesius A pentatonic ostinato introduces the exotic meditation. (1888–1952). These free style poetic ambience, and the soft sound of muted The second movement returns to the mood translations must have resonated deeply strings in sensuous chromatic harmonies of unrestrained passion. The protagonist’s The second song depicts an exotic Chinese with Haas, with their themes of loneliness, evokes the erotic lyricism of the opening yearning turmoil is portrayed by the music’s landscape observed from a boat sailing down longing for return home, and the trauma of section. The introduction is concluded by ceaseless whirling. the river. The movement of the boat is loss. a tone-painting image of ‘fata morgana’: conveyed by the opening piano motif, which a brief melodic figure gradually ascends into The last poem offers an ambivalent resolution resembles the splashing of waves against the The opening four-note ostinato, which stratospheric heights of the violin part until to the theme of insatiable longing. The side of the vessel, while the mountains, permeates the whole first song (and reappears it dissolves in the ‘mist’ of ambiguous static protagonist exclaims in ecstasy: ‘You are mine!’. rocks, and valleys are described by later in the cycle), has profound significance. harmonies. From this sound scape emerges Yet, in his manuscript, Haas instructs the unaccompanied solo voice. Haas’s imaginative Associated with the opening words of the poem – ‘My home is there, faraway there’ – of the ‘rising moon’, which connects the Considering the context of Haas’s PhD research concerns the music of Pavel Haas the ostinato becomes a symbol of longing successive poems. The song starts in a imprisonment in Terezín, one is bound to in the context of inter-war avant-garde for home. Its ceaseless repetition and melancholic and meditative mood, which question the meaning of this joyful conclusion. movements in Czechoslovakia and beyond. accelerating pace imply that the thought of later gives way to an ever-increasing sense Is it an expression of the composer’s hope home has become an idée fixe, that is of unrest, culminating with a violent outburst in liberation and return home, or should perpetually and ever more desperately of despair. The protagonist’s agonised cry one search for a darker subtext? The repeated in the protagonist’s mind.