BERLIOZ: Les Nuits D’Ete, Op. 7; L’Enfance du Christ, Op. 25: L’adieu des bergers: Four Scenes – Leontyne Price, soprano/Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner (Op. 7)/St. Anthony Singers/Goldsborough Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis
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Culled from a 1964 RCA 4-track tape source, the Berlioz song-cycle Les Nuits D’Ete (1841; orch. 1856) instantiates one of the few excursions into the exotic world of this composer by Fritz Reiner (1888-1963), whose intensely ardent conducting style finds a natural complement in the brilliant vocalism of Leontyne Price (b. 1927). The explosive color range strikes us immediately, in the transparency of the Villanelle, with its metric debts to Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony.
The sheer vibrancy of the orchestral tissue in Le Spectre de la Rose , “sprinkled with silver droplets of water,” according to the poet Gautier, bedazzle the ear. Price’s elegant low tones invoke the themes of love and death in “Les Lagunes,” the persona’s lamenting the loss of his beloved, the Chicago Symphony cellos in glamorously dark form. Price “whitens” her high notes for “La blanche creature/Est couchee au cercuril,” the icon of the pale corpse in the grave. Some pre-echo infiltrates the acoustic on the repeated “Ah!” but the Price magic achieves an operatic frenzy, clearly placing this score in the same, dramatic-expressive mode as the Romeo and Juliet Symphony. Emotional restraint in grief marks “L’Absence,” although the sentiment of the entombed flower urges our tears. Price’s control in diminished dynamics proves striking, her chest tone a pointed line of resignation. There is an affinity with later writers in “Au Cimetiere” (Clair de lune), the white tomb under the yew tree. The music culminates in the suggestive image of “l’ange amoureux,” an amorous angel sighing to heaven. Berlioz’ uncanny harmonies–particularly in the clarinets–create an eerie aura around the “blanched” words, music itself invoked as a courier of fallen shades. “L’ile Inconnue” takes us on a series of imaginative sea voyages in the form of a barcarolle, the soul having been reborn and eager for the flights of Daedelus. Price negotiates the alternating coloratura, legato and parlando styles with silken aplomb, a finesse that basks in the sultry throes of Romanticism.
The oratorio L’Enfance du Christ (1853) excerpts derive from a 1960 London 4-track tape. HDTT does not identify the singers–Colin Davis used Janet Baker and Philip Langridge for his Philips recording–for the opening sequence, Scene V, “Bethlehem the Stable,” in which Mary and Joseph sing a serene lullaby to the Christ child in the manger. Berlioz achieves a natural, simple style, a refined distillation of his more complicated, harmonically audacious persona. In Scene VI, a chorus of unseen angels warns Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt to escape persecution from Herod. The Overture depicting the Flight into Egypt is a fugal affair in triple time, lyrical but strict, almost a Berlioz treatment–especially in the woodwinds–of a tune we might find in Bach’s Musical Offering. The eponymous Shepherds’ farewell to the Holy Family remains the famous selection, a loving pastorale, though its chromatic line can become quite intricate and the bass tones solemn. The chorus, colored by Berlioz’ exceptional ear for the woodwinds, casts a ray of hope into a fearful humanity.
— Gary Lemco
