French concert programme — Fauré, Hahn, Satie & others

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Vocalise-Etude (1906)

Raynaldo Hahn (1875–1947)

Tyndaris (1900)

Erik Satie (1866–1925)

Le Chapelier (1916)

Arthur Honegger (1892–1955)

Trois Chansons de la Petite Sirène (1926)

Chanson des Sirènes

Berceuse de la Sirène

Chanson de la Poire

Joseph Canteloube (1879–1957)

Brezairola (1927)

Manuel Rosenthal (1904–2003)

La souris d’Angleterre (1934)

Although the French repertoire cannot boast a vocalise as hypnotic as Rachmaninov’s Op.34 No.14, it does have several distinguished examples. Some of the best, including Ravel’s Vocalise-Etude en forme de habanera as well Fauré’s Vocalise-Etude, were commissioned by Louis Hettich for a volume of wordless songs designed to familiarize his Conservatoire singing students with the problems of modern vocal writing. “Taking a line for a walk” like a Paul Klee drawing, Fauré’s contribution is more a sustained study in melody than a study in vocal technique, with the occasional modest piano counterpoint and a magical change of mode towards the end. Enterprising though he was in inviting Ravel to participate in his teaching project, Hettich surely never even thought of Hahn, who was not admired for his academic distinction. He could, however, turn his hand to anything when writing for the voice and was particularly adept at period pastiche – even when there was no known style to draw on, as in the cycle of ten songs based on Leconte de Lisle’s Études latines. While the idiom of Tyndaris, the seventh of the Études latines, is far from anything one could reasonably expect from the ancient world, it contrives in its discreet modalism to be both chastely remote and voluptuously present at the same time.

The remaining four songs in this group all have to do with childhood in one way or another. Satie’s Lc Chapelier, from his Trois mélodies, is based, textually, on René Chalupt’s interpretation of the mad hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland and, musically, on a tune from Gounod’s Mireille. It is an unlikely combination but one with a comic potential Satie did not fail to realize. Honegger’s Trois Chansons de la Petite Sirène were written for a marionette-play version of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid., which no doubt explains their tiny stature. Even so, the eerie siren song, the gently rocking lullaby and the naughty nursery rhyme are most arfully written. Brezairola, another lullaby, is one of the least resistible items – it’s a Barbra Streisand favourite – among the many seductive if overglamorised folk-song arrangements featured in Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne. Far less familiar but a neat conclusion to both the animal and childhood themes of the progrmme, La souris d’Angleterre comes from Rosenthal’s series of 12 Chansons du Monsieur Bleu – “Mr Blue” being the composer himself, who insisted on wearing a conspicuously royal blue suit and so acquired the nickname from the young son of his librettist Nino (pseudonym of Michel Verber). Brilliantly witty in its chosen idiom, passing from music-hall jig to briefly parodied funeral lament, the setting displays an accomplisthment worthy of a pupil and long-term friend of Ravel.