The Program
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
"Pastorale"; "Viens! une flûte invisible"; "El desdichado"
Camille Saint-Saëns was the most facile and prolific of
composers. "I live in music like a fish in water," he once said,
and he also commented that he produced music "as an apple tree
produces apples." A child prodigy at the piano, by his early teens
he was also showing a remarkably sophisticated ability in song
writing. Berlioz, always skilled in the mot juste, said of
him: "He knows everything, but lacks inexperience."
Saint-Saëns was not drawn to very serious verse, nor did he probe
deeply below the surface of the words. Fritts Noske describes his
strengths thus: "Mobility of rhythm, sonority of harmony, variety
of movement, and melody closely tied to the cadence of the words,
all contribute to make the game—for basically it is nothing but a
game-witty and enthralling."
The first two duets we hear date from 1855, when the composer was
only 20. Both depict a classical pastoral idyll, so beloved in
French literature and painting. Set to words written in the
early-18th century by André Cardinal Destouches, "Pastorale" is a
gently syncopated song that exudes freshness and charm. In "Viens!
une flûte invisible," using verse by Saint-Saëns's favorite writer
Victor Hugo, two lovers pledge eternal love to the swaying
siciliano rhythm commonly used for pastoral
music.
Written by a much more mature Saint-Saëns in 1871 to an anonymous
Spanish verse, "El desdichado" ("The Unhappy One") is a more
complex and realistic song, taking a playfully cynical view of
lovers' sighs and raptures and condemning romantic love as mere
"drunkenness," best avoided. Set to a dashing bolero rhythm, it is
a showcase for the singers' coloratura and tight ensemble.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
GABRIEL FAURÉ
"Puisqu'ici-bas," Op. 10, No. 1; "Pleurs d'or," Op. 72; Pavane in
F-sharp Minor, Op. 50; "Tarentelle," Op. 10, No. 2
No other composer shaped and enriched the French song tradition
more skillfully than Gabriel Fauré, who composed some 100
mélodies over the course of his long career, from "Le
papillon et la fleur," composed when he was 16 in 1861, to the
cycle L'horizon chimérique of 1921, when he was 76.
Beginning with songs of lush lyricism like the three duets we hear
tonight, he progressively refined and pared his approach to
songwriting until by his last collections—everything subordinated
to the subtlest, most perfect declamation of the word and its
emotional weight.
As a young man, Fauré was accepted into the brilliant salon of the
legendary singer-actress Pauline Viardot and fell in love with her
daughter, Marianne. For five years, the composer paid court;
finally in 1877, she accepted his proposal of marriage, but then
three months later broke off the engagement. Both "Puisqu'ici-bas"
and "Tarantelle" were written during this period (1873) for
Marianne to sing with her sister Claudine. In "Puisqu'ici-bas," the
words by Victor Hugo provided a very personal and reassuring
message from the composer to his intended. The graceful melody is
traded back and forth between the two singers, then melded together
in close harmonies.
Despite the refinement of his music, Fauré was a passionate man,
and his ardor may have frightened away the reserved Marianne. That
quality blazes forth in "Tarantelle," which is set to the intense
leaping rhythms of the eponymous Neapolitan dance. This is a
virtuoso duet that requires considerable technical and musical
agility from both singers.
Dating from 1896, "Pleurs d'or" was inspired by a later love
affair: the now-married Fauré's romance with Emma Bardac, who would
later become Debussy's second wife. It was she who urged Fauré to
read Albert Samain's collection Au jardin de
l'infante (In the Infanta's Garden), from which
this verse is drawn. As pianist Graham Johnson writes, "There is a
luxurious sensuality to this music: The entwined vocal lines swoon
as if responding to a caress."
We also hear Fauré's famous Pavane of 1886, arranged for piano and
two voices using the text by Robert de Montesquiou-Fezenzac for its
choral-orchestral version: a poem of elegantly artificial courtship
in the fête galante style, which we encounter again in the
Debussy and Hahn songs. This exquisite music is based on the
stately, slow-tempo 16th-century court dance named for the Italian
city of Padua.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
"Clair de lune"; "Mandoline"; "Beau soir"
The two songs by Claude Debussy that Ms. Fleming sings come from
the beginning of his career, when he was still a restless and
rebellious student at the Paris Conservatoire. During these years,
he had begun to earn money as an accompanist for singers. In 1880,
he became captivated by a beautiful amateur soprano Marie-Blanche
Vasnier, the wife of a well-to-do bureaucrat. Mme. Vasnier's clear
and agile voice prompted a flood of songwriting, and "Mandoline" is
one of the songs Debussy dedicated to her.
Set to a poem by Debussy's friend Paul Bourget, "Beau soir" may
actually have been written as early as 1878. Beautiful and
conventional in text and musical treatment, it shows little of
Debussy's original voice in its regular rhythms and standard
arpeggiated accompaniment. But already with "Mandoline" of 1882,
the real Debussy has emerged in a wonderfully spontaneous and
rhythmically flexible treatment of a poem from Paul Verlaine's 1869
set Fêtes galantes. Inspired by Watteau's paintings, these
poems conjured the idle and frivolous world of 18th-century
aristocrats absorbed in witty gossip and changing love alliances.
Opening and closing with a plink, the piano imitates the mandolin
throughout. (Later in the program, we hear this same poem in
Reynaldo Hahn's setting.)
Debussy would never have imagined his brief piano piece "Clair de
lune" would become his most popular work-indeed one of the most
popular works in all classical music. It was the third piece in his
keyboard set Suite bergamasque of 1890, and he did not get
around to publishing that suite until 1905 after the success of his
opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Today, we think of it as the
ideal nocturne, its gentle melody and wash of soft colors
enchanting our ears.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
LÉO DELIBES
"Les filles de Cadix"; "Duo des fleurs" from Lakmé
Even Tchaikovsky—that master of ballet—was deeply impressed by
the brilliant scores Léo Delibes wrote for the classic ballets
Coppélia and Sylvia. With his gift for
creating light, graceful, and often exotically colorful music,
Delibes was also a master of operetta. But, like Offenbach, he
longed to write something more worthy, and that became his gorgeous
opera of forbidden love set in the British Raj,
Lakmé (1883).
This taste for exoticism can also be found in the most popular of
his small output of songs, "Les filles de Cadix," set to a sly and
taunting verse by Alfred de Musset. Using the traditional rhythm of
the Spanish bolero, this is a showpiece for both the soprano voice
and the piano, conjuring the proud flamenco style of
Andalusia.
At the end of the program, we return to Delibes for the
haunting "Duo des fleurs" from Act I of Lakmé. Daughter of
a fiercely partisan Hindu priest, the beautiful Lakmé and her
servant Mallika sing this duet full of fragrant imagery as they
leave the temple for a bath at the river side; on her return, she
will meet Gérald, the British officer with whom she falls in love
and whose departure from India will bring about her death. No one
has written music that more sensuously intertwines two women's
voices than this.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
REYNALDO HAHN
"Le rossignol des lilas"; "Infidélité"; "Fêtes galantes"; "Le
printemps"
Though Reynaldo Hahn was born in Caracas to a Venezuelan mother
and a German father, he became as thoroughly French as any musician
of his era. As Brian Zeger, writes, "He was a constant presence in
the salons of Parisian society where he would entertain,
accompanying himself at the piano, frequently with a cigarette
dangling from his lips." He was a master songwriter, bringing to
his work his own skills as a singer, as well as a connoisseur of
literature. In 1894, he met Marcel Proust, who became his most
intimate friend for nearly 30 years and guided his literary
tastes.
A child prodigy, Hahn began writing songs of remarkable
craftsmanship and sophistication at the age of 13. He was
particularly captivated by the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and that
poet in turn reportedly wept upon hearing Hahn's exquisite settings
of his verse. The poetry always reigned supreme in Hahn's songs,
the words set with crystalline clarity and never overpowered by the
accompaniment.
"Le rossignol des lilas" is an ode to spring of ravishing, yet
subtle lyricism with perfect declamation of the words, gracefully
and tactfully supported by the piano. Set to verse by the great
Théophile Gautier, "Infidélité" is a song of reminiscence told with
hushed restraint. The singer's last line, given even more
prominence by being unaccompanied, reveals the reason for the
title. An ecstatic piano part conveys the joy of spring's arrival
in "Le printemps." "Fêtes galantes" sets the same text used by
Debussy in "Mandoline"; Hahn's setting is less casual, more
calculated and polished. Wonderful touches are the languidly
downward-sliding phrases of the third verse with their sly upward
flips, as well as the song's witty last line. All is unified by the
high tinkling part in the pianist's right hand, imitating the
mandolin.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
HECTOR BERLIOZ
"La mort d'Ophélie," Op. 18, No. 2
In 1827, Hector Berlioz attended performances in Paris by a
visiting English dramatic troupe of Shakespeare's
Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Though he
understood little of the English words, he fell instantly in love
with Shakespeare—and more tangibly with the Irish actress Harriet
Smithson, who played the roles of Ophelia and Juliet. His mad
pursuit of her culminated in their marriage in 1833: a sad case of
a romantic dream being crushed by day-to-day reality. His passion
for Shakespeare, however, fared considerably better, and both these
plays generated striking musical works.
Berlioz's close friend and sometime financial backer Ernest Legouvé
shared the composer's love for Shakespeare and created a poem that
was a very close paraphrase of Queen Gertrude's speech in Act V of
Hamlet, describing Ophelia's death by drowning after she
has been driven mad by Hamlet's rejection and his murder of her
father. In 1842, Berlioz turned the poem into a ballade for soprano
and piano, and in 1848 expanded it into an orchestral work with
two-part women's chorus. Ms. Fleming and Ms. Graham sing a duo
version of this later arrangement. In 1849, "La mort d'Ophélie"
became the second piece in Berlioz's compilation
Tristia (Sad Pieces), which also contains an
orchestral funeral march for the close of Hamlet.
"Ophélie" is set in the buoyant 6/8 meter of a barcarolle, and the
pianist's left hand also imitates the sound of the brook with
constantly rippling 16th notes. Each of the freely varied strophes
ends in a haunting wordless refrain of wailing appoggiatures, which
makes a particularly magical effect when the two voices slide
against each other after the first and final verses.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
ANDRÉ MESSAGER
"Blanche-Marie et Marie-Blanche" from Les p'tites
Michu
André Messager was one of the most prominent and versatile
musicians at the turn of the 20th century. A pupil of Saint-Saëns
and Fauré, he became equally renowned as a pianist, conductor,
opera administrator, and composer. It was he who encouraged Debussy
to keep writing Pelléas et Mélisande and conducted
its 1902 premiere in Paris. He became manager of both the
Opéra-Comique and London's Royal Opera, Covent Garden, yet he was
most successful as a composer of operettas, both of the classical
French variety and in the more modern style of the 1920s.
In 1897, he wrote one of his most charming works: Les p'tites
Michu (The Little Michus). Its story by Albert
Vanloo and Georges Duval is a crazy concoction that bears a
resemblance to the plots of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1793, the wife
of the Marquis des Ifs dies in childbirth, and her husband, on the
run from the revolutionary soldiers, deposits the baby girl with
the shopkeeper M. Michu, who also has a little girl born at the
same time. Soon after, M. Michu is bathing the two children; upon
taking them out of the bath, he can't remember which is which! The
two girls grow up believing they are twins. In the giddy waltz
"Blanche-Marie et Marie-Blanche," the two, now of marriageable age,
introduce themselves and proclaim their absolute unity—and penchant
for mischief.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
JACQUES OFFENBACH
Barcarolle, from Les contes d'Hoffmann
Jacques Offenbach was an earlier master of the French operetta
who longed to create something more serious and substantial. He
devoted the final years of his life to writing his chef
d'oeuvre, Les contes d'Hoffmann, based on the stories
of the German Romantic E. T. A. Hoffmann as cobbled together by
librettist Jules Barbier. With the score not quite finished,
Offenbach died in October 1880, four months before
Hoffmann was premiered in a truncated version,
completed by Ernest Guiraud at the Opéra-Comique.
Ms. Fleming and Ms. Graham sing the opera's most famous number: the
languidly lovely duet Barcarolle ("Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour"),
which is performed by Hoffmann's companion Nicklausse and the
courtesan Giulietta at the beginning of Act III. Since this act is
set in Venice, it is a lilting barcarolle of music to be performed
on the water.
—Janet E. Bedell
© 2013 The Carnegie Hall Corporation