Shani Diluka (piano)
The Proust Album
Natalie Dessay (soprano)
Pierre Fouchenneret (violin)
Guillaume Gallienne (narrator)
Orchestre de Chambre de Paris/Herve Niquet
rec. October 2020, SR1, Philharmonie de Paris (Concerto); November 2020, Riffx 1, Scene Musicale, Paris
French texts with English translations included for songs only
WARNER CLASSICS 9029667625 [81:52]
2022 is the anniversary of the death of Marcel Proust, halfway through the publication of his great novel À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, for the English version of which I continue to prefer the Shakespearean title Remembrance of Things Past to the more literal In Search of Lost Time which has replaced it in recent printings. 1922 also saw the publication of Paul Valéry’s Charmes, Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. It was the annus mirabilis of modernist literature.
One of the many pleasures of Proust’s novel is his keen and well-informed interest in the arts. The characters include the writer Bergotte, the painter Elstir and the composer Vinteuil. They are fictional, but are loosely modelled on actual artists, Bergotte on Anatole France, Elstir on Monet and Vinteuil on Franck. There are also many references to other writers, artists and composers and from them a clear view can be built up of the tastes of Proust, or rather of his unnamed first person narrator.
The pianist Shani Diluka, born in Sri Lanka but long resident in France, has had the idea of creating an album reflecting Proust’s musical tastes. She has put together a programme of short works by composers named in the novel and, where practical, of their named works. These are mostly French and from around the turn of the twentieth century, as one might expect, but Gluck, Wagner and Strauss make appearances and Reynaldo Hahn, who was a friend and probably lover of Proust, makes several. His piano concerto is the only orchestral item and opens the disc. It turns out to be a delightful work in three movements, the middle one very short, which immediately creates the right mood for hearing the rest. We also have piano pieces by Franck, Massenet, Debussy and Fauré (one of these specially arranged by Diluka from a song) as well as two actual songs by Fauré, sung by Natalie Dessay. A rare tiny piano piece by Wagner takes us briefly to the world of Parsifal, while an early piano piece by Richard Strauss receives its premiere here. Kempff’s arrangement of Gluck’s La plainte d’Orphée is the sole representative of earlier music.
The boldest idea is the recreation of the violin sonata by Vinteuil, which plays an important part in the novel. This is not an actual work and there have been several candidates for Proust’s model. Some people think that it was the Franck violin sonata. I don’t myself think that there was a single model, though, if forced to choose, I would nominate the sonata by Pierné. Some composers have even subsequently written works to fit Proust’s description. Diluka’s ingenious solution is to assemble a composite work, using pieces by Hahn, Ysaÿe and Chaminade. These are not well-known, at least by me, and I am always pleased by such recreations, as I was here. Pierre Fouchenneret is the able violinist. I was mildly disappointed that Diluka did not attempt a recreation of the other work attributed to Vinteuil in the novel and described at considerable length, a septet.
There are two piano pieces by Debussy, of whose opera Pelléas et Melisande Proust was an enthusiastic champion. Diluka plays the early Rêverie sensitively, as she does most of the other works. However, sadly, her L’Isle Joyeuse is a disappointment – rushed and with awkward transitions between the sections. Perhaps she was too busy organizing the rest of the programme to give sufficient time to preparing this. However, all the other items are nicely done and the recording is fine. The programme ends with the famous madeleine passage from the end of the Ouverture of the novel, read in French, with some of Hahn’s music underlying some of it. The booklet gives texts and translations of the two songs by Fauré but not of this passage.
However, the value of a concept album like this does not depend as much on the quality of the individual performances as on the overall idea. Proust, with his real understanding of music, benefits particularly from this approach. In fact there have recently been two other recordings also drawing on this idea. The cellist Steven Isserlis with Connie Shih have a disc titled Music from Proust’s Salons on BIS and the violinist Theotime Langlois de Swart with Tanguy de Williencourt on Harmonia Mundi have recreated an actual concert hosted by Proust in 1907, using original instruments, under the title Le Concert Retrouvé. An older recording (it dates from 2011) by cellist Anthony Leroy and pianist Sandra Moubarak exploring the same idea is Proust le Musicien. All these have only partly overlapping programmes though Hahn always makes an appearance. I haven’t heard those other discs but Proustians will enjoy this one. As for others – well, read the novel first.
Stephen Barber
Previous review: Michael Cookson
Contents
Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) Piano concerto in E (1930) [27:58]
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Rêverie (1890) [3:53]
Hahn Ninette (Premières valses No 3) (1898) [0:44]
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) La plainte d’Orphée (from Orphée et Eurydice trans. Kempff) [3:14]
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Au bord de l’eau Op 8/1 (1875) [2:15]
Cesar Franck (1822-1890) Prélude (from Prélude, Fugue et Variation, trans unstated) (1860-2) [3:34]
‘Sonate de Vinteuil’
Hahn Nocturne in E-flat (1906) [5:09]
Eugene Ysaÿe (1858-1931) Mazurka Op 10/1 (1884) [3:32]
Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) Serenade espagnole Op 150 arr. Kreisler (1895) [1:59]
Fauré Romance No 3 in A-flat (from Romances sans paroles Op 17) (1863) [2:36]
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Elegy in A-flat (1881) [1:29]
Richard Strauss (1861-1949) Nocturno (from Stimmungsbilder Op 9) (1884) [6:04]
Fauré Les Berceaux trans. Diluka (1879) [2:20]
Jules Massenet (1842-1912) Mélodie Op 10/5 (from Les Érinnyes) 91866-7) [2:36]
Faure Le Secret Op 23/3 (1883) [2:15]
Debussy L’Isle Joyeuse (1904) [5:54]
Hahn Les reveries du Prince Églantine (from Le Rossignol éperdu: Série I) with Marcel Proust (1871-1922) L’Épisode de ‘la madeleine’ from À La Recherche du Temps Perdu: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) [6:14]
