This is a particularly fine example of good programming and sensitive and
thoughtful chamber musicianship. The conjunction of Debussy and Caplet works
very well, the introduction of the latter being especially welcome. There
are two pieces that demand the participation of the IRIS Orchestra, directed
by Michael Stern, the first being the
Danse sacrée et danse
profane. Elizabeth Hainen, whose photograph adorns the booklet cover,
is the central focus of this and all other performances. She has been solo
harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1994. The sound here, in a
recording made in the Gould Hall of the Curtis Institute, is appropriately
diaphanous but certainly has sufficient body. Effectively balanced, with the
harp neither spotlit nor swamped, the performance is finely judged from all
perspectives. And whilst I retain a fondness for that old live 1941
recording made by harpist extraordinaire Marcel Grandjany and the Budapest
Quartet, one must acknowledge that we are not comparing like with like. It’s
on
Bridge, by the way.
Hainen herself has arranged the
Petite Suite for harp. The sound
here is deliberately a little more forward but sonorities remain
delightfully rich. Few would decry the arrangement which sounds like a
more-than-effective contribution to the harpist’s art. The Sonata for flute,
viola and harp introduces flautist Jeffrey Khaner and violist Roberto Díaz.
Both are well-known colleagues of the harpist and no strangers to recording,
and I have reviewed both men’s work over the years. Khaner has been the
Philadelphia’s principal flute for almost a quarter of a century, and Díaz
is now the President of Curtis, having been the former principal viola of
the Philadelphia. The recording of the Sonata is as successful as one would
have hoped; light, well-balanced, refined, and full of colour and fancy.
Caplet is represented first by
Divertissements, about which,
regarding the first,
À la française, the word ‘glistening’ is the
mot juste - it belongs to Hainen in her booklet note. The dramatic
guitar-strumming evocations in the second of the panel, the Spanish
movement, have more than a whiff of Seville and move from mere whispers of
sound to extrovert Iberian passion. The
Légende was composed for
chromatic harp and orchestra in 1908 and later turned into
Conte
fantastique for pedal harp or piano and string quartet in 1923. The
literary source is Poe’s
The Masque of the Red Death and Caplet’s
means are almost cinematic in the juddering string writing and angst. The
feverish intensity never lets up, the knocks on the soundboard of the harp
startling in their doom-laden portent. This is a vivid dance of death, a
kind of lurid tone poem of evil, brilliantly realised here.
It caps this disc excellently, tracing a course from diaphanous to
devilry, and all impeccably performed.
Jonathan Woolf
