BERLIOZ Vocal Works = La belle voyageuse, Op. 2, No. 4; La captive, Op. 12; Le jeune patre Breton, Op. 13, No. 4; Zaide; Sara la baigneuse; Tristia; Chant sacre; Helene; Le ballet des ombres – var. soloists/Sylvain Cambreling – Hanssler

by | Jul 3, 2010 | Classical CD Reviews | 0 comments


BERLIOZ Vocal Works = La belle voyageuse, Op. 2, No. 4; La captive, Op. 12; Le jeune patre Breton, Op. 13, No. 4; Zaide, Op. 19, No. 1; Sara la baigneuse, Op. 11; Tristia, Op. 18; Chant sacre, Op. 2, No. 6; Helene, Op. 2, No. 2; Le ballet des ombres for Chorus and Piano – Laura Aikin, soprano/Lani Poulson, mezzo-soprano/ Alexander Yudenkov, tenor/Florian Hoelscher, piano/ SWR Symphony Orchestra and Vokalensemble Stuttgart/Sylvain Cambreling – Hanssler CD 93.210, 61:24 [Distr. by Naxos] ****:

Often inspired by the classic written word, Hector Berlioz devoted himself to setting literary texts as songs and choruses, always rife with Berlioz’s special coloration and attention to emotional nuance. Berlioz arranged his sundry vocal works both for the salon and for the more public venues in which the spirit of post-Revolutionary democratic zeal marked the occasion. The dominant aesthetic, the collaboration of words an music, obsessed Berlioz much as it would dominate his “natural,” dramatic successor, Wagner.

The program (rec. 2003-2007) opens with a setting of an Irish Legend, “The Lovely Voyager,” after Thomas Moore, set by Berlioz around 1841 with his beloved Harriet Smithson in mind.  A delicate score (his third such setting) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, it captures Berlioz’s sentimental attachment to Ireland, concerning a beautiful woman who wanders through the countryside, that “sweet land of harps. “La captive” (after Victor Hugo) had a lovely recording prior by Jennie Tourel. A beguiling woman sings in 6/8 of her imprisonment in Asia Minor or North Africa, intimated by a bolero rhythm played sul ponticello by the strings, a deliberate sense of reverie that wants at the words “air espagnol” the tremolos and airy woodwinds to be intimate soft breezes and the possibilities of love. The pastoral Le jeune patre Breton (1842) after a verse novel by Brizeux depicts a shepherd who thinks of Anna, his beloved who tends mountain goats. The notion of “afar” comes by way of the French horn and various plaints from assorted woodwinds. The 6/8 rhythm rocks and sways with the delicacy of tender dalliance among high cliffs in idealized space.

Roger de Beauvoir is a pseudonym for a poet-journalist named de Bully, a friend of Berlioz. Beauvoir’s Zaide presents another “exotic,” a Moorish orphan carried off–quite willingly–by a knight on a golden saddle. In the style of a bolero, the music recalls the lure of Granada, Cordova, and Seville, with castanets and brilliant strings well ahead of Bizet for French Hispanism. Soprano Laura Aikin collaborates with the SWR Symphony in plastic sensuousness. In the 1840 setting of Sara la baigneuse–Sara the Bather–Berlioz takes Victor Hugo’s poem from the collection Les Orientales into the realm of Pierre Louys and his scandalous contemporaries in decadence. A naked girl on a swing contemplates her attractive form in the reflection of a pool. In no hurry to clothe her nude form, she inspires visions of Moorish bliss and oxymoronic, salacious innocence. Soprano and mezzo-soprano treat the material as a ballad duet in delicate harmony or canon, sometimes whispering of the girl’s charms.

The extensive 1852 triptych Tristia–sad objects–imitates at once Ovid and Shakespeare, the first part “Mediation religieuse” (after Thomas Moore) belonging to the Envois de Rome Berlioz had to submit to keep his Prix de Rome. A small orchestra accompanies a plaintive six-part mixed chorus without altos. The melodic line favors descending minor harmonies–shades of Tristan–as Berlioz renders a vision of Heaven for which he himself harbored little sympathy. La mort d’Ophelie (1842) with words by Legouve has the chorus intoning Gertrude’s depiction of Ophelia’s drowning from Act IV of Hamlet. The spirit of Irish actress Harriet Smithson looms nigh in this effective lament, the harmonies of which will reappear in the symphony Romeo et Juliette Marche funebre for the last scene of Hamlet depicts the military formality of the protagonist’s death, and his funeral rites ordered by young Fortinbras. The chorus intones but one syllable, “Ah,” as a mantra of despair. The writing for brass, strings, and tympani well suggests aspects of Liszt as well as the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony of Berlioz himself.

Additional words by Thomas Moore inspire Chant sacre (1829; rev. 1843), with a tenor solo who celebrates the night sky in a pantheistic moment taken as No. 6 from Neuf melodies. The scoring favors the clarinets–four of them–including two bass clarinets for autumnal colors, while the slow tempo and the vocal blend easily suggests later developments by Faure. No. 2 of Neuf melodies is Helene (after Irish Melodies), whose conceits involve a strong hunting motif, as though Berlioz were aware of Weber’s Der Freischutz. Set in three stanzas, the male chorus receives orchestral support from a French horn quartet, oboe, strings, and tympani. Finally, a work for piano and chorus–adapted from Herder and set by Albert Duboys–the Ballet of Shades, a kind of danse macabre based on Hamlet’s reference to the “witching time of night, when churchyards yawn.” The melodic tissue we know well as the animated scherzo in Queen Mab from Romeo et Juliette, where the Berlioz magic for orchestration enchants us.

This disc provides an essential complement to anyone’s standard Berlioz library.

–Gary Lemco

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