RTF Classical releases at November 2018 Andrew Matthews-Owen, Jonathan Dove (playing), Claire Booth, Susan Bickley Purcell Room 15 May 2018, photo © Sebastian Böttcher 2018 30 3 INTRODUCTION by ANDREW MATTHEWS-OWEN NOTES ON THE PEFORMERS This recording came about as a result of a coffee chat I had in 2017 with my long time Susan Bickley is one of the most accomplished mezzo-sopranos of her generation, with a duo partner Claire Booth. We talked about the forthcoming Debussy centenary, our wide repertory encompassing the Baroque, the great 19th and 20th century dramatic roles, enormous admiration for the composer, and how his five settings of Charles Baudelaire’s as well as contemporary repertoire. In May 2011 she received the prestigious Singer Award poems are among the most complex scores we had both explored. Claire and I decided at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the highest recognition for live classical music in it would be a timely opportunity to revisit these songs again, so I embarked on the UK. She has performed widely in opera, concert and recital roles, and recorded programming a concert which would bring together some of the important musical and extensively. personal strands which ran through Debussy’s life. Claire Booth, soprano, a leading light of the contemporary classical music scene, is Claude Debussy’s own story is one which a mere sleeve note cannot begin to touch upon. internationally renowned both for her commitment to an extraordinary breadth of His life was governed by one rule, illustrated perfectly in an encounter with one of his repertoire, and for the vitality and musicianship that she brings to the operatic stage and tutors, Ernest Guiraud, who remarked that Debussy’s harmonic navigation in one concert platform. exercise defied the laws of music: “There is no theory, you merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.” responded the student. Andrew Matthews-Owen is among the most sought-after collaborative pianists of his generation, with a passionate commitment to contemporary music, regularly appearing in As I started researching Debussy’s life, exploring his songs, and reading recollections of concert, and on commercial recordings with some of the finest classical artists of our time. his friends and detractors, particularly the words he wrote to his wife and mistress, an image emerges, almost in technicolour, of a man who blazed through a life which was often brilliant and occasionally devastating. As we remember this composer, one hundred years after his death, it seems apt to begin with an Élégie by Erik Satie, with whom Debussy enjoyed a warm friendship. One of the first written accounts of their friendship in fact is a dedication to Satie on copy No.45 of the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire: ‘Erik Satie, gentle mediaeval musician, who has strayed into this century for the joy of his good friend Claude A. Debussy’ (27 October 1892). Satie’s Trois Mélodies of 1916 provide swift contrast to the meditative elegy they follow, www.jonathandove.com and the tumultuous settings of Baudelaire which they precede. For these songs, the www.intermusica.co.uk/artist/susan-bickley listener is best served by reading the texts, which our producer declared to be “bonkers www.claire-booth.com and wonderful”, to which we agreed! www.andrewmatthews-owen.com 4 29 NOTES ON THE COMPOSERS Jonathan Dove (1959- ) is an acclaimed and prolific composer. Few composers working Short in duration, each song packs considerable impact and has an irresistible today have embraced the modern opera house as consistently and successfully. His charm. From the opening cakewalk-like introduction of La Statue de Bronze, the incomparable catalogue of more than twenty diverse operatic works is indicative of a piano hopping around to help illustrate the frustration of a heavy statue longing to practical and lively theatrical mind, steeped in operatic experience. In all his music, Dove be a real frog, blowing bubbles in a pond, to the the ironic dignity of Daphénéo, has a strong desire to communicate, to entertain, and to provoke transformative where we overhear a daydream about trees between two faux-mythical characters experiences. His musical language is at once immediately appreciated by listeners new Daphénéo and Chrysaline. The set is rounded off with Le Chapelier (“fairly brisk, in to the concert hall and has provided performers, audiences and directors with rich the manner of Gounod”) which could be the ramblings of the Mad Hatter himself. possibilities for interpretation; several of his major operatic works have been performed in multiple productions all over the world, and his list of commissioners includes some of Composed between 1887 and 1889, Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire the world's greatest musicians. He is one of the only living composers able to write hurl us into the sensual worlds of Baudelaire’s words and Richard Wagner’s successful comic opera, to sustain a company through 150 performances of a single harmonies. When I first started exploring them as a student, these songs were unlike opera, or to captivate a million viewers with a single performance. any Debussy I had previously played. I remember going to the library at the Royal Academy of Music to research whether or not these songs had originally been written Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) although married, was “extremely attractive to for voice and orchestra, so similar to oft uncomfortable operatic score reductions women…..and noted for his conquests”, including Emma Bardac. A refined and were they under my fingers. I could not understand why these notes were so difficult sensitive composer, his works were noted for their harmonic and melodic innovation. to get into the muscle memory; their movement somehow heavier than the Debussy I had discovered in Ariettes oubilées or Chansons de Bilitis, the harmonies more Claude Debussy (1862-1918) had a turbulent private life, as is perhaps evident from the densely packed and the perfume around the them an intoxicating Oud, rather than letters Jonathan has chosen to set to music. His innovative compositions must have been the subtle scents I had associated with this composer. surprising and shocking when first heard. He was a close friend of Erik Satie. Baudelaire wrote that “music often pulls me like a tide” and Debussy’s approach in Erik Satie (1866-1925) was an eccentric and colourful figure in the world of early 20th setting Le Balcon responds in kind, capturing the impetuous tone of the writing, as century Parisian avant-garde. An original and experimental composer; a talented writer; rich harmonies roll by in broad gestures, with unexpected, fleeting undercurrents, a member of the communist party; a mystic who invented his own religion, and a heavy often not with the voice, rather a backdrop to the singer’s own navigation. The song drinker; in addition to his friendship with Debussy he formed a close friendship with Jean is at once epic yet personal, and dedicated to the poet’s mistress Jeanne Duval. Cocteau and was involved with the Dada movement. A few distinguished pianist friends and colleagues share my view that this song is almost too much for what the human voice and keyboard can capture. As an interpreter, few songs have made this pianist feel both navigator and voyeur as blatantly as Le Balcon. The words are impulsive, and the music swirling around them dense with a harmonic potential that is suitably fruitless to attempt to predict. 28 5 This song, indeed all five songs, dare the singer and pianist to think broadly and Je te veux (1903) I Want You orchestrally. The colours they evoke are of deep jewels, as if looking at an isolated fragment of a Titian painting. Everything is passionate and deeply serious. There can be J'ai compris ta détresse, I’ve understood your distress, nothing half-hearted in our efforts to explore these songs. Poet and composer dare us to Cher amoureux, my dear lover, get in between the dots, over bar lines, and, as Baudelaire himself once reacted to Et je cède à tes voeux: and yield to your desires: Wagner’s music, to revel in “a veritable arabesque of sounds sketched out by passion”. Fais de moi ta maîtresse. Make me your mistress. Loin de nous la sagesse, Let us abandon reason, I would like to add that this is not an essay or analysis of the songs we are presenting. Space Plus de détresse, no more sadness, limitations with the sleeve ensures that priority is given to the texts, rather than artist biographies J'aspire à l'instant précieux I long for the precious moment or this pianist’s musings, and rightly so. The composers started with the texts, and so should Où nous serons heureux: when we’ll be happy: we. I hope this short note will serve to give the listener an insight into why we programmed this Je te veux. I want you. recital, how it came about and simply the love we have for the words and music themselves. Nearly all songs I have performed or recorded have been inspired by love, loss, or both, Je n'ai pas de regrets, I have no regrets, Et je n'ai qu'une envie: and I have but one wish: and few composers’ songs have the autobiographical honesty as those of Claude Debussy. Mary Garden (Mélisande in the original 1902 production of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Près de toi, là, tout près, close, very close by you, Vivre toute ma vie. to live my whole life long. Mélisande) noted: “I honestly don’t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved Que mon coeur soit le tien Let my heart be yours his music - and perhaps himself.” This changed with the birth of his beloved daughter Et ta lèvre la mienne, and your lips mine, Emma-Claude (“Chou Chou”) in 1905, but his own love life is tumultuous to say the least.