Fauré Two late song cycles

 Day12

Fauré  two late song cycles

Mirages op 113

Stephen Varcoe

Graham Johnson

L'Horizon Chimérique op 118

Charles Panzéra

Madeleine Panzéra-Bailot

I came fairly late to French song. Schubert and Schumann were 'my' song composers and although I will have head some French song in recitals I didn't really explore the repertory. My way in was through hearing Susan Graham singing Reynaldo Hahn's L'Heure Exquise, which totally captivated me. From there I started to find more about Hahn and heard his own recordings as a performer of French song, particularly Bizet and, especially, Chabrier. Since then with the help of Hyperion's superb series of recordings of French song I have started to explore the repertory in greater breadth. Of course Fauré is an essential part of that corpus but I hadn't previously got round to these two late song (and relatively compact - four songs each) cycles.

As is the case for most people of my age my first experience of Fauré was via Listen with Mother, where the Berceuse from the Dolly Suite was used as the theme music. It was a joy later on to be able to play this as a piano duet with my daughter and an even greater joy when she chose it as music for us to walk into the register office for her wedding. Other than that Fauré for most people means the Requiem. This was a favourite of my mother's and the famous King's College recording was often playing in the house. Wonderful as this is I do sometime wonder what it would have originally sounded like - is our aural image of it rather too sugar-coated?

Late Fauré is rather a different matter. By this time in his life he was virtually deaf and his musical style was very stripped back, with very few expansive gestures. Indeed there is little here which could be regarded as conventionally melodic. But what really counts here is the harmonic inventiveness. This is of course still tonal music but the subtle shifts of key and the chromatic inflections create an atmosphere of real beauty and infinite imagination. Of the two cycles I preferred  Mirages because of its real inward looking intimacy. L'Horizon is slightly more extrovert, though still tinged with sadness. The version of this I heard was that by Charles Panzéra and his sister. They gave the first performance and the work is dedicated to him. 

French song can be an acquired taste. It can certainly sometime seem refined to the point of pretentiousness - Dudley Moore so beautifully captured this in his parodies in Beyond the Fringe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujei43f2qkU.  But, as I have been discovering, there is so much here to enjoy once you find a way in.  

I've certainly been helped by the writings of Graham Johnson. Not only in his superb notes to the Hyperion recordings but his book A French Song companion, which is essential reading for all who wish to explore this repertory.  I'm sure there will be more French song in this project.