Réveil Op.11 No.2

Chausson, who died in his prime in an inexplicable cycling accident, wrote less than half as many songs as such industrious and long-lived contemporaries as Fauré and Saint-Saëns. Evenn so, the total of duets - the two Op.11 items and a third that was apparently meant to go with them but never got into print - is similarly minimal in his case too. La Nuit and Réveil are, however, among the most delightful of all his songs. The first of them, a Banville setting of 1883, is a highly poetic expression of nocturnal bliss. Réveil, set to words by Balzac three years later, is not a too rude awakening. The piano part is more eventful than in La Nuit and the partnership between the two singers is contrapuntal rather just harmonic but the atmosphere of calm and joy in nature is no less effectively sustained.