Duparc:12 songs

Day 59

Duparc: 12 Songs

Charles Panzéra

Magdeleine Panzéra-Baillot

Duparc had one of the most extraordinary careers of all notable composers. He lived into his 80s but ceased composition completely in his mid 30s. The reasons for this are not completely clear but it seems he had some sort of mental crisis which made it impossible for his to composer again. He probably has the smallest output of any composer of real significance. Essential it amounts to one symphonic poem, a few miscellaneous bits and pieces and a group of a dozen or so songs - the exact number depends on how you deal with some juvenilia and revisions. But this dozen songs are, rightly, regarded as absolutely central to the French song repertory and are the equal of anything by Fauré or the other masters of the genre.

I knew a few of these songs individually but this was my first time hearing the set. What surprised me most was the sheer power and energy of some of the songs.  In my mind French song in general and Duparc in particular suggests dreaminess, yearning and rather limpid textures with plenty of quiet tremolo figures in the piano. There is certainly some of this but elsewhere  there there is fire and unrestrained passion. The piano parts are constantly inventive and there were some really interesting exchanges where the main melodic material moved from the singer to the piano and back.  Duparc’ harmonic language is refined and typically French - only occasionally was one reminded of Schumann or the German school. Duparc certainly had a tendency to move flatwards rather than sharpwards in his harmonic progressions and this certainly helps bring a reflective even melancholy to the more inward-looking songs.

This performance is by Charles Panzera and his wife, who we encountered in the Fauré songs a few weeks ago. The recording shows its age but is a really fine example of that particularly French  baritone sound that has now virtually disappeared.

Moeran: Symphony in G minor

Day 58

Moeran: Symphony in G minor

BBC Philharmonic

Vassily Sinaisky

This symphony by Moeran - for some reason he tends to be known as E J Moeran as if he were an amateur cricketer about to come out to bat at Lords - has a high reputation among English writers on music.  I’ve seen it described as one of the very greatest of English symphonies.  As far as I recall I’ve not heard a note of Moeran’s music before so I approached this with an open mind.

If I had expected anything it would have been a piece of English pastorale as part of what Elizabeth Lutyens naughtily called the ‘cowpat’ school. There was certainly an element of Vaughan Williams in this music but the main presence here is Sibelius - a reminder of just how much he loomed over English music between the wars.  Indeed the end of the symphony is a fairly blatant rip off of the end of Sibelius 5.

At times the music seems like pro-Walton who was working on his first symphony at the same time as Moeran was writing this piece (he spent the best part of a decade on and off on the composition). But there is nothing of the real bite and intensity that Walton produces from his orchestral forces - which are actually smaller than those required by Moeran.

I found this a perplexing work. There were lots of interesting passages but I couldn’t see how it all hung together - there seemed to be too much disparity in style and material. Perhaps the scherzo came off best but even that seemed to meander at times.

So while I was glad to hear the piece I did wonder what all of the fuss was about. I would see this as a curiosity rather than a neglected masterpiece. Perhaps another hearing might make me change my mind but it may be some time before I can get round to that.

Dvořák: Violin concerto

Day 57

Dvořák: Violin concerto in A minor op 53

Rachel Barton Pine

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Teddy Abrams

I listened to a fair amount of Dvořák when I was at school and university. I had several of the symphonies on LP and a friend of mine had some of the others so I think that I had heard all of the symphonies by the time I left school. I still have an affection for symphony no 1 - The Bells of Zlonice - though it is far too long for its material.

I've played symphonies 5-9 and the cello concerto and also the wind serenade. At university the opera group gave the first performance in the UK of Dmitrij - which was certainly one of the highlights of my time there.

Since then I have rather tempered my early enthusiasm for Dvořák. I think that the problem is that he himself struggled with two different aspects of his musical personality - there is the Czech composer characterised by the symphonic dances but also the serious Germanic composer of symphonies. Personally I think that his music is at its finest when he is not pretending to be Brahms - but that it because of all the major composers Brahms is the one whose music I find least interests me.

This violin concerto seems to suffer from the duality. Time and again one hears stretches of the Czech Dvořák, but then these become stifled by what seems to have been the underlying need to write in a more serious style. So in the end I felt the piece was neither one thing nor the others. The last movement was the most attractive, but even there is wandered off in places and I felt there was a lack of consistency in the style.

So although I was glad to hear the work and of course there were some beautiful passages this is not something which I can see myself returning to with any great enthusiasm. Of course like everything in this project judging a piece on a single hearing is hardly a fair way of coming to a considered view about its merits, but that is the whole point of what I am doing this year. Listening to new pieces and deciding what further exploration I want to make.

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande

Day 56

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande

Orchestra and Chorus (unnamed)

Roger Désormière

It was only when I was researching the Dukas opera (day 46) that I realised to my embarrassment that I had never actually listened properly to the most famous Maeterlinck opera of them all - Debussy’s Pélleas. I’d heard bit and pieces of it over the years and I think that must have written an essay about it at some point, but I’ve never seen it on stage and this was the first time that I sat down with a score and followed it from beginning to end.

It is an extraordinary piece and I can quite see why it is regarded as such an important milestone in the development of opera. To be honest it took me a little while to get property attuned to the ethos of the piece but once I had got into the right frame of mind I found it utterly absorbing. The declaration of love between the two main characters is about as far removed from the world of La Bohème as it possible to be. That’s not a criticism of Puccini - music which I love - but a reflection of two very different approaches to music and drama.  The end of Pélleas is wonderfully moving and I was so pleased to, at long last, atone for my neglect hear the whole score in its entirety.

This is a classic performance recorded in France during the war with singers who were coached by some of the original performers of the opera.  There is a particular quality to French voices of this era which is highly attractive and fits the music like a glove. That style has more or less disappeared now as singers have much more international careers. The mono recording is showing its age and couldn’t compare with a modern performance but it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the intricacies of the score.

Perotin: Sederunt principes

Day 55

Perotin: Sederunt Principes 

Early music consort of London

David Munrow

We go back to day to some of the earliest notated music in the western tradition. Perotin, Leonin, and the Notre Dame School were the starting points int he music history course on the B.Mus syllabus - the these are the first two composers in the western tradition that we know by name - thanks to the lecture notes of a student of music history who has come to be known as Anonymous Four, which were written at least a century after this music was written. These composer of the Notre Dame school were experimenting in writing music in two or more parts - with a slow moving lower part based on plainsong and more free-flowing upper part(s) using rhythmic patterns. Indeed this is the first western music we know which has rhythmic notation.

Perotin's claim to fame is that he wrote two four-part pieces - the first four-part music that has come down to us. The more famous of the two is Viderunt, which is the one which always seems to be used to illustrate his music. I have heard that several times but I hadn't hear the companion piece Sederunt.  Both pieces were written in around 1200.

This is astonishing music. Perotin slows down the chant so much that a single note can last a whole minute. On top of this the three voices weave in and out of each other in a dancing rhythm - in modern notation we would note this largely as alternate crotchets and quavers in 6/8 time, - with frequent clashes of tones and fourths. In many ways it seems very modern and this music has undoubtedly had a big impact on the minimalist school of 20th and 21 century composers.

The music raises so many questions. We know the notes and there is broad consensus on how to interpret the rhythms but we don't know anything else about how this music was performed. How fast did it go? Was it sung as the same volume throughout or was their light and shade? Were the upper parts sung by single voices or groups of voices? How were the long notes in the lowest part sustained? Were instruments used?

Then there are questions of how on earth the performers actually managed the performance. What music did they actually sing from? how did they rehearse? how did they keep together. In modern transcriptions the music is organised in conventional bars but the concept of the bar as a unit of music didn't really exist at the time that this music was written. The manuscripts of Perotin's music we have are copies made after his death and to some extent the rhythmic notation will have been amended to suit the conventions of the time.  

I don't really know enough about music of the period to begin to answer these questions but as a practical musician it intrigues to wonder what the singers of the time made of this completely new sort of music. It must have seen completely strange to them and surely they couldn't simply have been given a copy of the music and sung it there and then correctly first time through.

This performance from David Munrow and the Early music consort of London is now almost 50 years old. I find that quite astonishing because it only seems like yesterday that the LP set of Music in the Gothic Era came out - I had a copy on my shelves for many years. The performance stands up pretty well. It is not quite as austere as some modern performances but neither is it over elaborated by superfluous instrumental additions. Whether the music sounded like this in Paris in 1200 we will never know, but on its own terms this is a very satisfying performance.

I was lucky enough when I was a school to see David Munrow and the Early music consort give a lecture recital in Norwich in, I think, 1972. He was an infectious enthusiast for all things musical, not only live but in his wonderful radio programme for young people Pied Piper. His death at only 33 was not only a personal tragedy but a huge loss to music in this country. Imagine what his career would have been like had he lived to a ripe old age.

Hahn: Venezia

Day 54

Hahn:Venezia

Anthony Rolfe Johnson

Graham Johnson

I have great affection for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn. They sit on the boundaries between mélodie and popular song and have all of the best features of both. Perhaps you should avoid listening to too many one after the other - to do so would be rather like overindulging in rich chocolate but heard a few at a time they are irresistible.  As ever Hyperion has done a real service for connoisseurs of French song with its 2 volume set of Hahn and several other single discs including this one of songs from and about Venice.

Venezia is a short cycle of six songs for tenor and piano with some other solo voices joining in the the last song. It is written in a popular Italian dialect but that hardly matters. What is so compelling about the music is how, in some simple gestures, Hahn conjures up the dream atmosphere of being serenaded in a gondola as you an oarsman gently propels you along a canal.

I knew the second song - La barchetta - indeed this performance by Rolfe Johnson is one of my favourite recordings of anything. He transforms himself from this rather proper English tenor who grew up in the English cathedral repertoire into a completely seductive Venetian lover- it is quite a revelation.  Hahn himself recorded his song to his own accompaniment - famously managing the melismas at the end of each verse in a single breath. But his performance is much more matter of fact that the one here. 

I’d not heard the entire cycle before - I loved it and will certainly be returning to it. Hahn is such a fascinating character - he was born in Venezuela and came to France as a chance. He knew everybody who mattered in literary and musical circles and ended his life after returning to France after exile during the Second World War (he was Jewish) to become director of the Opéra in Paris. He could never be ranked as a major composer but he is surely one of the most lovable of all those who didn’t quite make it to the very highest rung.

Zemlinsky: Lyric symphony

Day 53

Zemlinsky: Lyric Symphony

Elisabeth Söderström

Thomas Allen

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Michael Gilen

When I was at university Zemlinsky was little more than a name in the history books, but in the years since then there has been something of a discovery of his music and now most of his work is available on disc, often with more than one version. But this was my first proper encounter with his music.

Unfortunately I have to say that it is not something that I particularly warmed to. The idiom is somewhere between Mahler and Schoenberg and requires a huge orchestra as well as two strong singers. Personally I found the whole piece overheated and over complex. Every bar seemed to be full of orchestral effects and while each particularly one might have been interesting the overall effect became very tiring. Both parts, but particular the baritone solo, are in a high register and somewhat remorseless. Thomas Allen here did a really fine job of keeping the tone going in the sustained high register - it must have been a nightmare to sing.

The quieter moments, particularly the soprano solo towards the end offered some relief. But again I felt that Zemlinksy didn't quite create a memorable vocal line and I found it difficult to quite understand where he was going with the musical argument.

So nothing here has prompted me to explore more of the composer's works. No doubt my loss because his admirers, and there are many, speak highly of his output. But then the whole point of the this project is for me to encounter music that I have not heard before. It would be very odd if I had an enthusiastic response to everything that I heard.