Chabrier Une Education Manquée

 Day 104

HChabrier Une Education Manquée

Soloists 

Collegium Musicum de Strasbourg

Roger Delage

Like most people I came to Chabrier via España, which in my view vies with L’apprenti sorcier, for the prize as the best single movement short orchestral work. I first played it in youth orchestra and have always loved its sheer verve and wit. But there is more to Chabrier than this one piece and over the years I have got to know a fair amount of his music. Without exception I have found it hugely enjoyable , elegant and sophisticated yet with a sense of fun tinged with melancholy. Indeed one of the recordings I play more than almost anything else is that astonishing recording of Reynaldo Haydn singing (to his own accompaniment) Chabrier’s I’sle Heureuse.

Chabrier did not have  much luck as an opera composer - one theatre went bankrupt soon after the premiere of one of his operas and another burned down three days after another premiere. He was so ill at the first performance of Gwendoline that he didn’t recognise his own music and he left his last opera Briséïs unfinished. The first act of that was completed - it is a work on a grand scale with a quite breathtaking opening scene. What a tragedy is was that it was never complete.

This opera by contrast is tiny in scale - it requires three singers a small orchestra (though the first performances were piano accompanied) and it last no more than 40 mins with dialogue. But it is a gem. Full of lyricism and humour it has a lightness of touch which is reminiscent of the best of Offenbach but also looks forward to the refined operettas of Messager and his contemporaries. One duet, where the character is showing off all of his knowledge of the categories of the arts and philosophies Hebrew, Hindu, algebra, chemistry, Greek, trigonometry, metaphysics, therapeutics, mechanics, dialectics, aesthetics, statistics, mythology, metallurgy, brings to mind the Major General from the Pirates of Penzance and, even more, Abdul Hassan, Barber of Baghdad. All three of these pieces were written more of less at the same time so they are probably all reflecting an opera buffa tradition.

This was a delightful piece and confirms to me yet again what a fabulous composer Chabrier was. He was revered by several generations of French composers and you can see why. Graham Johnson starts his notes to the Hyperion edition of Chabrier’s songs with these words There is no one like him, this adorable man, and nothing in French song, indeed in all music, which is quite like his music.  I completely agree.