Anaëlle Tourret (harp)
Perspectives
André CAPLET (1878-1925)
Deux divertissements pour harpe (1924) [10:38]
Paul HINDEMITH (1895-1963)
Sonate für Harfe (1939) [10:44]
Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976)
Suite for Harp, Op.83 (1969) [14:22]
Heinz HOLLIGER (b.1939)
Präludium, Arioso und Passacaglia (1988) [14:09]
rec. April 2021, Friedrich-Ebert-Halle, Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
ES-DUR ES2085 [49:48]
The music written for solo harp seems to be one of the most neglected areas of the classical repertoire, both in the concert hall and on CD. Most of the composers who wrote relatively extensively for the unaccompanied harp, such as Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1742-1790), Elias Parish Olvars (1808-1849), Charles Oberthur (1819-1895), John Thomas (1826-1913), Henriette Renié, Marcel Tournier (1879-1951), Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961) and Marcel Grandjany (1891-1961) are largely regarded as of interest only to specialists (including players of the harp – perhaps because they were all harpists themselves. Where composers of wider interest and repute have written for solo harp – in works such as, for example, Spohr’s Fantasia in C Op.35, Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie Op. 95, Fauré’s Impromptu in D flat major Op.86, Roussel’s Impromptu Op.21, William Mathias’s Improvisations for Harp Op.10, Berio’s Sequenza 2 and Elliot Carter’s Bariolage – they are all too readily quietly ignored as minor works largely irrelevant to their composer’s oeuvre.
Perhaps a ‘star’ harpist is needed to draw attention to this repertoire. There are certainly more than a few very good harpists around, such as (in no particular order – and this is necessarily a very selective list) Anneleen Lenaerts, Xavier de Maistre, Alice Giles, Emmanuel Ceysson, Naoko Yoshino, Isabelle Perrin and Catrin Finch. All of them rightly have their admirers, but none has fully captured the imagination of the concert-going or CD-buying public.
This exceptional recent CD by the young French harpist Anaëlle Tourret will, I trust, increase awareness of another very accomplished harpist, who can perhaps do much to make the case for her instrument and its repertoire. Born in Orléans in 1992, Tourret studied the harp with Ghislaine Petit-Volta, Nicholas Tulliez, Andreas Mildner and Xavier de Maistre. She had many successes in the world of harp competitions – in 2015, for example, she won four prizes at the prestigious International Harp Contest in Israel. In March 2018 she was appointed Principal Harp of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg. She is also Teaching Assistant to Xavier de Maistre at Hamburg’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater.
On this, her debut solo CD, Anaëlle Tourret has chosen to play an exciting (and exacting) programme made up of four twentieth century works in diverse idioms. She plays with impeccable technique and accuracy, her obvious virtuosity always in the service of intelligent and sensitive interpretation. The four works are presented in chronological order of composition, from André Caplet’s Divertissements of 1924 to Heinz Holliger’s ‘Präludium, Arioso und Passacaglia’, written in 1987. This chronological order seems to offer a sensible structure for a review of the disc.
Though I cannot readily document the claim in detail, I have the sense that André Caplet’s reputation suffered somewhat after his early death in his forties (he was wounded and gassed during World War I). For some years, he seems to have been remembered more for his friendship with Debussy, a number of whose works he orchestrated) than for his own music. More recently, Caplet’s own compositions have attracted greater attention. In his two divertissements for solo harp “extreme demands are placed on the instrument om terms of its dynamics and articulation markings” (Frédérique Cambreling). Each of the two pieces has its own heading. The first is headed “à la française” and has the performance marking “Bien allègrement et carré”, which might, I suppose, be translated as ‘very lively and straightforward’ (literally ‘square’); the second piece is headed “à l’espagnole” and has a performance marking which reads “Avec galbe et drapé” (‘with curve/shape and drape’) – Frédérique Cambreling’s booklet note on the piece (in its unsigned English translation) says of this marking that it is “oozing with sensual innuendo: galbe is normally used to refer to a woman’s shapely leg, while drapé describes the way in which her skirt hangs”.
Tourret plays the first divertissement with both lucidity and vivacity, balancing elegant lines with more abrupt and insistent passages. In Caplet’s score rhythms often take unexpected turns and emphases occur in unanticipated places; Tourret relishes these effects and in several passages makes the music sound freer and more ‘improvisatory’ than the score alone might make one expect. In every case, Tourret’s interpretation convinces; she seems fully to ‘possess’ this music and to make it her own in a manner which, I feel sure, the composer would have loved. I think one can hear Caplet’s love of Debussy’s piano music in Tourret’s reading of this work for solo harp and behind Debussy, as it were French harpsichord masters such as Couperin and Rameau. In the gorgeous music of the second of Caplet’s divertissements, Tourret’s playing is by turns delicate and forceful. There is a sense both of showy demonstrativeness and of inner communion with the listener/audience. The presence of many guitar-like figures further conjures up images of the dancing of a beautiful Spanish woman. Though neither Caplet’s melodies or rhythms are simply imitative, in Tourret’s performance this brief piece is enough to make one feel that the composer deserves an honourable place in the roll call of French composers from Lalo and Bizet to Ravel and Debussy who wrote fine ‘Spanish’ music.
While Caplet had his life disrupted (and probably shortened) by the First World War, Hindemith, who served as a private in that war, had his musical life drastically altered by the build-up to the Second. After the Nazis came to power, the fact that Hindemith’s wife was Jewish and that he had worked with many Jewish musicians, meant that his own work was labelled degenerate. An official ban on the performance of his compositions was announced in November 1934. Soon afterwards Hindemith was ordered to ‘take leave of absence’ (!) from his position as Professor of Composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. In 1938 he emigrated to Switzerland and in 1940 to the USA. Hindemith’s life and prospects were, thus, in a state of considerable disarray when he composed his Sonata for Harp in late September of 1939 (in the Swiss mountain village of Bluche, in the canton of Valais). He submitted the score to the Italian harpist Clelia Gatti-Aldrovandi, then a soloist of some fame and principal harp at the Teatro Regio in Turin, for her advice on technical questions and she suggested a few amendments to the composer.
The music of the Harp Sonata shows few signs of the turmoil out of which it was written. As so often, Hindemith proved able to understand and make good use of the characteristics and sonorities of an instrument with which he wasn’t especially familiar. The harp is used altogether idiomatically in the work’s three short movements (‘Mässig Schnell’, ‘Lebhaft’ and ‘Lied. Sehr langsam’). The first movement opens with an authoritative chordal statement, and Hindemith develops the material of the movement in regular sonata form with an air of (oddly!) untroubled nobility. The second movement is a nimble scherzo. The remarkable third movement, rich in both complex harmonies and expressive lyricism, is a fine piece of musical poetry. In the score this closing movement is prefaced by the text of a poem by Ludwig Hölty (1748-76), whose name will be familiar to lovers of German lieder since poems of his were set by many composers, such as Schubert (e.g. ‘An die Nachtigall’), Mendelssohn (e.g. ‘Holder klingt der Vogelsang’) and Brahms (e.g. ‘Die Mainacht’). ES-Dur generously provide all three stanzas of the original poem and an English translation in the booklet accompanying this CD. The poem’s ‘speaker’ is a harpist concerned about the fate of his harp after his death. He beseeches his friends to hang the harp “behind the altar/Where all the wreaths that mark the passing/Of many a dead young woman gleam” and where “the strings hum just like bees:/Children at play in the graveyard,/Would hear it and see the wreaths tremble”. Perhaps in his choice of this poem one sees something of Hindemith’s feelings in his time of trial.
It isn’t, I think, merely fanciful to hear the confident opening statement of the first movement as Hindemith’s declaration that he was uncowed by his appalling treatment and his difficult circumstances, and the rest of the movement as an assertion of quiet but strong resilience. The nimble dancing rhythms of the central movement seem to articulate a continued energy and vitality in the face of difficulty, while the closing movement, in its evocation of the traditions of German romanticism (explicitly in its use of Hölty’s poem and through it, implicitly, the great heritage of German music), seems silently to contrast this ‘true’ German tradition with the Nazi’s perversion thereof.
Anaëlle Tourret’s interpretation of the Hindemith sonata finds in it a moving dignity that does justice to the seriousness (though it is in no way solemn) of this work, which seems to say rather a lot in its relatively brief span. I have previously enjoyed and admired recordings of this fine sonata by several performers, notably by Jennifer Swartz (harpe, ATMA ACD 2265) and Osian Ellis (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Harp, Decca 4758727). Tourret’s recording is, at the least, on a par with such recordings and she perhaps communicates a greater sense of a musical ‘argument’ conducted across three movements than either Swartz or Ellis.
It is, of course, opportune that the name of Osian Ellis should be mentioned at this point since he was the dedicatee of Britten’s Suite for Harp (and gave the first performance of the work). When Britten came to write this Suite, his first work for unaccompanied harp, in 1969 he was not without experience of writing for the instrument. He wrote parts for the harp in at least two of his schoolboy compositions: the Quatre chansons françaises and his Symphony in D minor. In 1942 he composed A Ceremony of Carols, for a three-part treble chorus, solo voices and harp. The harp has important roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) and all three of Britten’s Church Parables – Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1965-6) and The Prodigal Son (1967-8). The harp part in each of the parables was written for Osian Ellis and Ellis was keen that Britten should write him a solo piece. This Suite in five movements (Overture – Toccata – Nocturne – Fugue – Hymn) was the work that resulted. The excellent booklet from ES-dur quotes a letter from Britten to Ellis (dated March 31st 1969) “My Dear Ossian[sic], Here is the Suite (which may have a different or more elaborate title – any suggestions?). I hope it works. I feel it is rather 18th century harp writing, but it came out that way.[…] If it amuses you at all, I shall be very pleased. It isn’t very profound, but it was written rather in reaction to a very grisly piece for the Save the Children Fund [Children’s Crusade] & I wrote it with the greatest joy thinking of its Creator.” Britten’s familiarity with the harp is clear in the thoroughness with which he makes use of the instrument’s resources. He employs expected devices such as tremolo, arpeggio and glissando, but there are also many very attractive passages of single notes. He uses – as Valeria Kurbatova has pointed out– every note available on the harp, from bottom ‘C’ to top ‘G’. But the work (least of all as played by Anaëlle Tourret) never feels even remotely like the kind of technical display that such a description might suggest. It is a work full of strong feelings – not least the obvious mutual respect of composer and dedicatee. That ‘respect’ and a related friendship are ‘formally’ acknowledged in the final movement, where the hymn tune Britten chooses to use there has, like Osian Ellis, its origins in Wales. It was first published (as ‘St. Denio’) in John Roberts’s’ collection Caniadau y Cyssegr (‘Hymns of the Sanctuary’) in 1839, though it may not have been composed by Roberts himself. The tune will be more familiar to English speakers from the hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, God only wise’.
Britten prepared a (very) concise programme note for the first performance:
1.
A classical ‘Overture’, with dotted rhythms and trumpet chords.
2.
‘Toccata’, a rondo busy with quavers and semiquavers, with much crossing of parts.
3.
‘Nocturne’, a clear tune with increasing ornamentation over a low, chordal ground.
4.
'Fugue', a brief scherzo, in three voices.
5.
‘Hymn (St. Denio), a Welsh tune, a compliment to the dedicatee, with five variants.
The five movements form an attractively designed sequence, with the ‘Nocturne’ at its centre. The two outer movements, ‘Overture’ and ‘Hymn’ contain what one might call the most ‘ceremonial’ music of the Suite, the Overture with its trumpet chords and its marking as ‘majestic’, and the ‘Hymn’ evoking public worship. At the mid-point the slow (and very beautiful) ‘Nocturne’ (another of Britten’s superb ‘night’ pieces) is heard between two faster movements, ‘Toccata’ and ‘Fugue’. Tourret’s reading of the Suite respects the contrasts and balances very attractively.
Touuret makes the chordal opening of the ‘Overture’ ring out with dignity and quiet grandeur, setting a mood which is sustained through the movement. Her version of the ‘Nocturne’, the opening of which is quietly ominous, fuses perfectly a sense of wonder with a feeling of apprehension and unease, wondrous moments of shimmering beauty occurring amid the ‘darkness’, like stars glimpsed through trees. Sombre writing in the bass is juxtaposed with higher bird-like notes. Tourret also responds well to the polytonality and the arpeggios in the ensuing ‘Fugue’, and she plays the closing ‘Hymn’ with convincing fervour. All in all, this is perceptive and accomplished reading of Britten’ Suite which ranks very highly amongst available versions, especially given the excellent recorded sound.
Heinz Holliger’s Präludium, Arioso und Passacaglia has, I suppose, the most unique sound-world of the four pieces on this disc. It was written for the composer’s wife Ursula, a harpist of international standing. Though the titles of its three relatively brief movements (ranging, in this recording, from the Präludium’s 7:12 to the Arioso’s 2:17) suggest the Baroque, any such affinities are, in practice, rather slight. The forward momentum of the Präludium (which the composer has described as a kind of perpetuum mobile) is interrupted at intervals by more ‘vertical’ writing, making greater use of single notes. The central Arioso places, as its name suggests, greater emphasis on melody. It carries the marking ‘very slowly’ and the note that it should be played ‘freely and with expressive declamation’. The contrast between the opening two movements is striking. The closing Passacaglia is described by the composer (quoted in the CD booklet) as “25 variations on five notes”. If one gives those five notes their German names: ut – ré – es – ut – la , one finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that their initial letters spell out the name u-r-s-u-l-a.
Ursula Holliger’s 1996 recording of her husband’s Präludium, Arioso und Passacaglia (on the CD Heinz Holliger, Lieder ohne Wörte, ECM 4750662) remains the benchmark for other recordings. Excellent as this new version by Anaëlle Tourret is, I don’t think it can be said to displace that by Ursula Holliger. Tiurret takes slightly longer than Ursula Holliger in each movement. This works to her advantage, I think, in the Arioso movement which sounds slightly more lyrical but, conversely, makes the initial Präludium feel more fragmented. Both are, however, very fine performances.
I had heard nothing of Anaëlle Tourret before listening to this CD, and was immediately much taken by her playing. Her technique, not least in terms of the skill with which she varies colours and dynamics, is exemplary and she gets to something like the heart of each of these four very different and very demanding works. I very much look forward to hearing her in other works for harp, whether as a member of a larger ensemble or as a soloist. This first solo CD deserves to make her name much more widely known.
Glyn Pursglove
