This lovely album, Chansons Grises (grey songs) appeals wonderfully to my deep sense of melancholy. And why not? It’s not the same as depression, as many people think, but rather a certain gloomy state of mind, yet often pensive and reflective. Hahn’s cycle, the namesake for this album, revels in the unclear and uncertain; his own writing is often sensual (a mother of melancholy) and slightly sad, and this makes for some lovely turns of phrase in a music that can be at once evocative and reflective at the same time. You would think the medieval settings of Zemlinsky’s cycle far removed from the fluttering aberrances of Hahn, but not so; his “greyness” comes alive in the form of richly drawn patterns of seminal interest to one who likens the strong and confident as symbols of the really-not-so-sure underneath it all.
Lili Boulanger – a superb composer who was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome – only to have her life cut short by Chron’s disease at age 24, had a definite penchant to the grey rivers of life, yet her music is some of the most fragrant of the era, as demonstrated by the songs given her, “In an immense sadness”, “Waiting”, “Reflections”, and the strongly relieving “The return”. Milhaud’s Jewish Poems are more of a litany of translated verse from the Hebrew, “Songs” of resignation, of pity, love, and most of all, longing, felt in the music if not understandable in the words.
Alma Mahler, a woman often credited with talent far beyond any sober assessment, remains known to us for usually two reasons (and not unfairly): the fame of her husbands, and her penchant for promiscuity. But she did have slight talent, and every once in a while one of her songs rears it head, as here, and is not unwelcome.
I like mezzo Janina Baechle’s voice very much, suitably dark and misty in repertory like this, and she is beginning to make quite a name for herself on the international stage. Charles Spencer is known to all, and for good reason. The sound is wonderfully captured, the surround adding a fine aural ambiance to her nicely drawn voice. I had to do a half-point deduction in the rating; sorry folks, but you can’t hope to market an album like this, so dependent on the availability of understandable texts, when you omit translations. It just won’t do, and is quite frankly a stupid blunder when marketing in English speaking countries.
— Steven Ritter
