Here are two song-cycles and one string quartet from younger generations
of French composers whose instincts are connected to Mélodie.
The three songs that make up Casadesus's
Suppléments
d'Âme are, tuneful, incantatory and emotionally volatile.
They have about them something of a spell and something of a somnambulatory
scena. The tinder really catches flame in the
Trois tentatives
- the last song - with Lys Nordet's operatic voice unleashed
with uncommon ardour and conflagration.
For eight years, from age 22, Casadesus who grew up in Montmartre
in what I take to be the great musical family was an artistic
director of EMI Pathé-Marconi working with two generations
of young and commanding French executant artists. At age 30 he
turned to composition alone and made his way through work for
French cinema and theatre. More about him at
www.casadesus.com.
Sandwiched between two chamber song-cycles comes Athané's
String Quartet No. 1 - a melodically aspirational work of singing
passionate intensity. It leans heavily on the long
cantabile
line and is most luminously lofted. Angers-born Athané
has made a considerable name for himself in the worlds of French
stage, radio and cinema. His inspiration is, on this evidence,
strongly and appealingly rooted in the example of Fauré.
If Casadesus's name was made strongly by his major score for the
1921 silent by Henri Diamant-Berger's
Three Musketeers,
French audiences may well know of Athané through the French
TV series 'Thalassa - The Colours of the Sea'. If you
enjoy surging melodic early Fauré then this is a quartet
you need to hear. After two movements of singing seduction the
final movement is just a shade more acerbic. It links with material
from the earlier movements.
www.pa-athane.com.
Baudine Jam is wonderfully in touch with the melancholy ecstasy
of Poulenc. Add to this an infusion of Duparc here and a dusting
of Chausson there. His soprano is Hermine Huguenel. She too, rather
like Nordet in the Casadesus, has tinder and kindling in her voice
sufficient that it smokes and flames. The writing is more varied
in surface than the Athané. Its long lines seethe with
concentration and passion. At 35 minutes this is an epic work.
It demands all of your attention and is very satisfying. The dreamy
waywardness of
Sous la lune argentée is memorably
eerie.
La ronce des regrets shows determination and rough
spirit at first yet then relaxes into the woodland wandering of
the previous song. Violin tendrils that reach out imploringly
and seductively from the last song
A la fontaine des amants.
Over all hangs a nostalgic and poignant melancholy that would
have delighted Bernard Herrmann hasd been around to hear this.
Jam has created and sustained a world of hooded eyes and muted
passion - the surreal dreams of Warlock's
Curlew and
Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire.
Jam has been active as a producer with Radio France. His biography
of George Onslow (564 pages ISBN: 2-9520076-0-8) has been well
received. He is also responsible for the first full critical edition
of the George Onslow's 36 string quartets. The violist of the
Prima Vista he has also been busy writing scores for silent films
and concert works.
There are notes with this CD in French and English and all the
words are printed in the sung French but without translation into
English.
The Prima Vista are warm in tone and warmly recorded; a pity about
the audible breathiness of one of the players. Small price to
pay for such a honeyed melos with engaging ebb and flow. They
have been very active in Clermont-Ferrand and beyond in the promotion
of the music of George Onslow. A fixture at "Les Soirées
Onslow" festivals they tour the various castles of Auvergne
in August each year.
Three living composers in three scores that owe more to early
twentieth century mulch than to the clever twenties or the wilder
Boulezian extremes. I would be interested in hearing more of their
work and hope that further CDs will appear.
Rob Barnett
Gréco CASADESUS (b. 1951) Suppléments d'âme for
soprano and string quintet (2008)
1.
Le second souffle (3'30)
2.
Lumières cardioïdes (4'30)
3.
Trois tentatives pour trouver la source (3'49)
Pierre-André ATHANÉ (b.1950) String Quartet
n°1 (2007)
4.
Pour la cime des arbres (5'47)
5.
Pour chaque jour qui passe (6'24)
6.
Pour le ballet des ombres (5'08)
Baudime JAM (b.1972) Les Horizons perdus for mezzo-soprano
and string quartet (2007) (poems : B. Jam)
7.
Miracles fugitifs (5'03)
8.
Le verger mystérieux (4'53)
9.
Sous la lune argentée (8'15)
10.
La ronce des regrets (6'09)
11.
À la fontaine des amants (8'36)
Hermine Huguenel (mezzo);
Lys Nordet (soprano); Daniel Grimonprez (double-bass); Prima Vista
Quartet (Elzbieta Gladys (violin 1); Carine le Calvez (violin 2);
Baudime Jam (viola); Gwendeline Lumaret (cello)) 
