This is the latest
in Malibran’s increasingly useful catalogue
of discs devoted to French vocalism.
The dominating feature is Hahn’s voice,
self-accompanied of course in the manner
of George Henschel, and one that has
occasioned more than a fair share of
critical bewilderment over the years.
The register is sometimes uncertain
– is it a baritone or a low tenor? –
and its actual usage has generated a
range of responses, from admiration
to frigid contempt via speculative amusement.
Hahn, of course, was not a professional
singer; he did appear at suitably elegant
Parisian soirées but his recording
career as a singer is quite out of proportion
to any public career in the role though
clearly not out of proportion to his
contemporary musical celebrity. His
first recordings date from 1909 and
Hahn returned to the studios two years
later for a further session. After the
end of the First World War, during which
he served in the French Army, he was
back for more recordings and there are
later examples, including those provisionally
dated to May 1928, as well as the 1930
and 1937 recordings.
It’s most instructive
to listen to Hahn’s performance of his
own La barcheta, for example,
from Venezia, the cycle in the Venetian
dialect and a setting of a poem by Pietro
Buratti. Whatever the constraints on
timing in 1909 this is still a performance
of a wholly different interpretative
stance from that of, say, Anthony Rolfe
Johnson and Graham Johnson in their
exquisitely eroticised recording on
Hyperion. They make explicit the rocking
and languorous sensuality of the setting,
in lapping waves of desire. Hahn on
the other hand is utterly robust; he’s
jaunty, not sexy, with the canal-lapping
rhythms choppy and animated, the slither
of a piano postlude at the end strong
and decisive; no sensual crooning for
Hahn, this is a hummed song recollected
in strength not an invitation to love.
Which is no more I suppose than saying
that the authorial voice, in musical
terms, is predominantly one that eschews
emotive highlights. As with most composer-performers
Hahn is straightforward and decisive.
The famous recording from Così
fan tutte demonstrates perfectly
the problem of Hahn’s range; he stands
on some curious cusp between voice types
even though as Gounod’s Maid of Athens
shows he had a non-existent
top. Where Hahn really scores is in
his idiomatic understanding of parlando
– listen to an exceptional example in
Bizet’s Chanson d’avril; there’s
no real voice, as such, but the conversational
ease is revelatory, the style superb.
From the same session
comes one of his most famous sides,
Offenbach’s Les charbonniers et fariniers
and Un homme d’un vrai mérite
(from La Boulangère a
des écus). The charm is
simply ineffable – lightness, perfect
articulation of vowels, nostalgic reflection,
all held securely in place with the
briskest and most scintillating of wit.
Accompanying the tenor Guy Ferrant we
can hear how Hahn passed on effortless
command of the Recitativo style of song
making, of which Chien fidèle
is the most notable example; how
wonderfully he reflects the antique
delicacy of Charles d’Orléans’
poetry. As a counterblast try the almost
aphoristic reticence of the piano part
in Paysage triste, a wholly superior
Verlaine setting. We have the added
bonus of the adorable Ninon Vallin in
a Hahn selection made from 1928 to 1930;
highlights are the two Etudes Latines
from 1930 and her famous Si mes vers
avaient des ailes – all a
delight. We can also hear his speaking
voice in Les instruments de L’Orchestre
of the type familiar to listeners
down the ages, in which he introduces
the instruments (the violinists, for
any lovers of French string playing,
are the superb duo of Henri Merckel
and Georges Bouillon).
There are a few more
delights on the way – his singing in
English in the Gounod Byron setting
for example or the charm of his Le
Devin du village and the irresistible
élan of his operetta singing
– and the tender intimacy he can generate
is best exemplified by the Maitre Wolfram
extract. Against that there is the terrible
unsteadiness of the 1919 recording of
his own Offrande and the even more lugubrious
recording of it a decade earlier. The
transfers by the way are in generally
decent condition and not over-filtered.
But of course we shouldn’t judge him
against professional singers – but strictly
on his own terms, as a sort of inspired
salon one-off, and yet still one of
the most attractive exponents of one
current in Parisian music making in
the early part of the twentieth century.
Jonathan Woolf
Reynaldo Hahn (tenor and piano, self accompanying)