19:30
1 Abendempfindung K. 523 [4:57]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
21:30
2 Nuit d’étoiles L. 4 [3:02]
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
3 Le grillon Histoires naturelles, No. 2 [3:07]
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
4 Claire de lune Op. 46 No. 2 [3:11]
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
22:30
5 The Night Three Belloc Songs, No. 2 [2:00]
Peter Warlock (1894-1930)
6 Tired Four Last Songs, No. 2 [2:31]
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
7 Dream-Song Dream-Songs, No. 3 [2:26]
Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936)
23:30
8 Auf der Bruck D. 853 (Op. 93 No. 2) [3:39]
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Midnight
9 Um Mitternacht Mörike Lieder, No. 19 [4:18]
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
01:00
10 Schon streckt’ ich aus im Bett [1:51]
Italienisches Liederbuch, No. 27
Wolf
11 Mandoline Op. 58 No. 1 [1:56]
Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’, No. 1
Fauré
12 Sérénade toscane Op. 3 No. 2 [2:50]
Fauré
13 Nicht länger kann ich singen [1:22]
Italienisches Liederbuch, No. 42
Wolf
03:00
14 Sonnet (2011) [3:35]
Raymond Yiu (b. 1973)
15 Oh! quand je dors S. 282 [4:38]
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
06:00
16 Und steht Ihr früh am Morgen auf [2:55]
Italienisches Liederbuch, No. 34
Wolf
17 Morgen! Op. 27 No. 4 [3:58]
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Encores
18 Der Mond kommt still gegangen Op. 13 No. 4 [2:04]
Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
19 Viens! Les gazons sont verts! [1:12]
Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
Total playing time [55:42]
Recorded on 13-14 February 2012 in the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
Producer & engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Piano: Steinway Model D, Serial No. 588188 (2004), maintained by Norman Motion
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Cover photography: © Paul Foster-Williams
Session photography: © Eoin Carey
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
This ingenious recital programme, devised by William Berger for the 2011 Lucerne Festival, describes in seventeen songs a sleepless night experienced by a man who reflects on his love for an unnamed woman. ‘Je rêve aux amours défunts’ (‘I dream of bygone loves’) runs the refrain from Théodore de Banville’s ‘Nuit d’étoiles’, set by Debussy, but it is often not clear in these songs whether the beloved is dead or living. Although there is a section of four serenades when the lover seems to be palpably and passionately present, many of the songs are characterised by dreaming, disorientation and hallucination. There is a celebrated nineteenth-century poem, ‘Durchwachte Nacht’ by Annette von DrosteHülshoff, in which the protagonist stays awake throughout the night and hears the clock strike each hour from ten in the evening to four in the morning. In the three o’clock song of Insomnia, ‘Oh! quand je dors’, however, the situation is not so clear, and we are left unsure whether the lover is asleep, awake or merely dreaming.
19:30 Mozart’s most celebrated song, Abendempfindung, was composed in Vienna during June 1787. Campe’s poem describes the onset of night, the transience of existence and the steadfastness of human love, and inspired Mozart to create a song that seems to ponder the meaning of life and anticipates the philosophical tone of Beethoven’s GellertLieder, Schubert’s ‘Grenzen der Menschheit’
and that other unearthly evening song, Richard Strauss’s ‘Im Abendrot’. The harp-like accompaniment was probably suggested by the image of the gleaming moon, which shimmers throughout in various keys: there is, in particular, a gentle modulation to D flat at the start of the fourth stanza that takes the breath away.
21:30
Almost all song-composers serve an apprenticeship before finding their true voice, and Debussy was no exception. When he left Paris for Italy in early 1885, he had already composed 40 mélodies, almost half of his eventual output. One of his earliest songs was a setting of Banville’s Nuit d’étoiles (c.1880), a perfectly symmetrical song with more than a whiff of the style of Jules Massenet about it. Sold for 50 francs to a publisher friend and later brought out in a great variety of different transcriptions, it was one of Debussy’s early successes. (There is, incidentally, an equally beautiful setting by Charles-Marie Widor.)
Ravel’s Histoires naturelles, settings of animal poems by Jules Renard, were premiered at a concert presented by the Société Nationale on 12 January 1907, with Ravel himself accompanying the mezzo-soprano Jane Bathori. The evening was a fiasco. The reason seems clear: by attempting to shape the vocal line to render as closely as possible the natural inflections and rhythms of Renard’s prose-
poetry, Ravel often ignored the mute ‘e’, which had till then always been set by composers as a bona fide syllable. This break with tradition caused certain sections of the audience to whistle and jeer from early in the performance, but the artists persevered to the end and even encored the final song of the set, ‘La pintade’. Debussy confided to Louis Laloy that Ravel had ‘acted like a conjuror, a fakir, a snake-charmer, who can make flowers grow around a chair,’ and Fauré confessed that he was shocked that ‘such things should be set to music’. These are mélodies of genius, however, unlike anything else in French song. There is a long tradition of animal portrayal in French music – works by Janequin, Couperin, Rameau, Chabrier and Saint-Saëns spring to mind – and Ravel proves a more than worthy successor. The composer seems to enter the life of each of the animals, and in Le grillon the sound of the cricket is suggested by a most realistic rhythmic repetition of G sharp.
Clair de lune, Fauré’s first Verlaine setting, dates from 1887, five years after Debussy’s version of the same poem. It is one of his finest compositions, a piano piece with vocal obbligato of breathtaking beauty that evokes the masked figures of the commedia dell’arte in an eighteenth-century landscape, familiar to us from the paintings of Antoine Watteau. Verlaine describes the song of the masqueraders blending with the moonlight: ‘Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune.’
22:30
The Night is the second of Peter Warlock’s Three Belloc Songs (1926). The composer instructs the singer to sing ‘soft and chant-like, very slowly’, as the poet beseeches ‘Most Holy Night’ to ‘cheat [him] with your false delight’ and grant him repose in death. The song, which for much of the time rarely rises above piano and ends ppp, requires a peerless legato Tired belongs to Vaughan Williams’s Four Last Songs which, though published in 1960, were in fact composed at different times. It is the gentlest of lullabies set to a rocking accompaniment that seems in the final cadence to echo a phrase from ‘Linden Lea’, composed over half a century earlier. All four poems are by his wife Ursula, a considerable poet who, while influenced to some extent by Yeats and Hardy, wrote verse of striking originality. DreamSong, which sounds for all the world like a gymnopédie by Erik Satie, sets a celebrated poem by Walter de la Mare; it was composed by Richard Rodney Bennett in 1986 as part of a cycle, Dream-Songs, that includes three other de la Mare poems: ‘The Song of the Wanderer’, ‘The Song of Shadows’ and ‘The Song of the Mad Prince’.
23:30
The poet Ernst Schulze tells us that he wrote Auf der Bruck on 25 July 1814 on a hilltop above Göttingen, called ‘Die Bruck’; he was nearing the end of a three-day journey through wild landscape that he had undertaken to visit
Adelheid, the woman he loved unrequitedly. The relentless quavers of the right hand convey the poet’s pent-up passion, and the ritornellos drive the lover nearer to his desire – and nearly insane. For Schulze, despite his astonishing propensity for self-deception, knows that his love will not be reciprocated: ‘Und dennoch eil’ ich ohne Ruh/ Zurück, zurück zu meinem Leide’ (‘and yet I hurry without rest, back, back to my grief’). With unerring instinct for the deeper meaning of a poem, Schubert depicts in his music a hopeless, circular journey that seems to get nowhere and peters out in the final bars, which are characterised, deep in the bass, by marcato crotchets and staccato quavers, a sort of death knell that dashes all his fond hopes.
Midnight
Um Mitternacht recalls Schubert’s ‘Nacht und Träume’ in the way the voice floats over a low-lying accompaniment, which rarely rises far above middle C. Eduard Mörike’s poem speaks of balance – in this case the moment of ecstatic equipoise between night and memories of the past day – and contrasts rest and movement. This polarity is reflected in the poem’s change of metre. The first four lines of each stanza are iambic, to suggest the dreamy and static character of Night; lines 5-8 and 13-16, however, have a mixed iambic-anapaestic metre that conveys the rippling movement and the dynamic quality of the water. Wolf’s darkly rocking triplets mirror the ‘uralt alte Schlummerlied’ (‘the ancient
old lullaby’), while brighter textures suggest the murmuring springs.
01:00
The horn-like motif in Wolf’s Schon streckt’ ich aus is wonderfully apt for the exultant young man who leaps out of bed at the dead of night and runs into the street with his lute to serenade his beloved. Fauré’s Mandoline, like ‘Clair de lune’, relates to the commedia dell’arte, and is the first of the Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’ , a misnomer that needs some explanation. The Princesse de Polignac, to whom they are dedicated, had invited the exhausted Fauré to recuperate in Venice, where she hoped he would agree to collaborate with Verlaine on an opera. The idea came to nothing, but Fauré’s brief stay in Venice inspired the Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’, of which only the first, ‘Mandoline’, with its plucked lute accompaniment, was actually composed in Venice. Several of Fauré’s early mélodies are Italianate in feel: ‘La chanson du pêcheur’, ‘Barcarolle’ and Sérénade toscane, a French translation by Romain Bussine of extracts from no fewer than three anonymous poems gathered by Niccolò Tommaseo in his collections of folksong called Canti popolari and Canti toscani. The last of these was also the source for Paul Heyse’s translation, Nicht länger kann ich singen, from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. Each composer’s setting is true to his own nature. Fauré’s mélodie, like his ‘Clair de lune’, has a moonlit
melancholy about it (both songs are set in B flat minor); while Wolf – along with Carl Loewe the greatest composer of comic lieder – creates, in only a single page of music, an unforgettable vignette of an unhappy serenader who sings ‘langsam und recht kläglich’ (‘slowly and most plaintively/lamentably’). Of the two meanings of ‘kläglich’, it is the latter (‘lamentably’) that predominates in this song: he has problems with breathing properly, we are told, which might account for the largely forte dynamic and the plethora of staccati, wrong accents and clumsy intervals.
03:00
Raymond Yiu’s Sonnet was composed especially for William Berger for this Insomnia recital in the 2011 Lucerne Festival. Since coming to England from Hong Kong in 1990 at the age of 17, Yiu has won a number of important prizes, including the SPNM George Butterworth Award (2003), the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Prize (2010) and a BASCA British Composer Award for Chamber Music (2010). ‘Sonnet’ sets a poem by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873), an American poet, now particularly remembered for his sonnets, who corresponded with Hawthorne, Emerson and Longfellow, and was a great admirer of Tennyson.
Oh! quand je dors is the most celebrated of Liszt’s French songs. In fact he set the words twice; the earlier version is typically fussy and
over-busy, but by the time Liszt approached the poem for a second time in 1859, he had learned to trust the singer to convey the magic of the verse, without hindrance from too tumultuous an accompaniment. Although Hugo’s poem tells the story of Laura and Petrarch, Liszt almost certainly had the Countess Marie d’Agoult in mind when he penned this immortal mélodie.
06:00
The accompaniment to Wolf’s Und steht ihr früh am Morgen auf, a love song of utter devotion, somehow evokes with its flowing quavers the stirring of the new day, the walking of the narrator’s sweetheart as she goes to church and, when the accompanist plays the quavers in octaves, the chiming bells heard in the distance. All this ceases at ‘Weihwasser nehmt Ihr’, as the piano imitates the organ while she takes the holy water, sprinkles her brow, bows down and genuflects. Purest Wolfian magic!
Richard Strauss’s set of four songs Op. 27 was his wedding present to Pauline de Ahna (Schumann had surprised Clara with a gift of comparable genius when in 1840 he composed Myrthen). Morgen!, the last of the set, has become perhaps Strauss’s most famous song. As with Fauré’s setting of ‘Clair de lune’, the voice seems to start in the middle of a sentence, as if the singer were too moved to give voice to his or her thoughts. The cantilena
of this beautiful song suggested the solo violin to Strauss when he orchestrated ‘Morgen!’ in 1897, four years after the original version with piano accompaniment. This later version comes close to kitsch, an effect that Strauss himself was careful to avoid at the piano: Alfred Orel tells us that the composer always accompanied his song with a minimum of rubato.
© 2012 Richard Stokes
Richard Stokes is Professor of Lieder at the Royal Academy of Music and has published many books on song, including A French Song Companion (OUP), The Spanish Song Companion (Scarecrow Press) and The Book of Lieder (Faber). He was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2012.
Texts and translations
1 Abendempfindung
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Abend ist’s, die Sonne ist verschwunden, Und der Mond strahlt Silberglanz; So entflieh’n des Lebens schönste Stunden, Flieh’n vorüber wie im Tanz.
Bald entflieht des Lebens bunte Szene, Und der Vorhang rollt herab.
Aus ist unser Spiel! des Freundes Träne Fließet schon auf unser Grab.
Bald vielleicht – mir weht, wie Westwind leise,
Eine stille Ahnung zu –
Schließ ich dieses Lebens Pilgerreise, Fliege in das Land der Ruh.
Werd’t ihr dann an meinem Grabe weinen, Trauernd meine Asche seh’n, Dann, o Freunde, will ich euch erscheinen
Und will Himmel auf euch weh’n.
Schenk auch du ein Tränchen mir und pflücke mir ein Veilchen auf mein Grab; Und mit deinem seelenvollen Blicke Sieh dann sanft auf mich herab.
Weih mir eine Träne, und ach! schäme Dich nur nicht, sie mir zu weih’n; O sie wird in meinem Diademe Dann die schönste Perle sein!
Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-1818)
Evening Sentiment
It is evening, the sun has gone, and the moon’s beam shines silver; so do life’s most beautiful hours fly away, fly past as in a dance.
Soon life’s colourful scenes fly away, and the curtain will fall. Our play is over! A friend’s tear is dropping already onto our grave.
Soon perhaps – the thought comes quietly to me, like a tranquil wind from the west – I will leave this life’s pilgrimage, take flight to the land of rest.
Should you then mourn over my grave, weeping to see my ashes, then, my friends, will I appear to you and carry you to heaven.
Shed thou, too, a tear for me and pluck a violet for me at my graveside; and with eyes full of passion look gently upon me.
Consecrate a tear for me and ah! do not be ashamed to consecrate it for me; oh, then it will be the fairest pearl in my crown!
2 Nuit d’étoiles Claude Debussy
Nuit d’étoiles,
Sous tes voiles, Sous ta brise et tes parfums, Triste lyre
Qui soupire, Je rêve aux amours défunts.
La sereine mélancolie
Vient éclore au fond de mon coeur, Et j’entends l’âme de ma mie
Tressaillir dans le bois rêveur.
Nuit d’étoiles…
Je revois à notre fontaine
Tes regards bleus comme les cieux, Cette rose, c’est ton haleine, Et ces étoiles sont tes yeux.
Nuit d’étoiles…
Théodore de Banville (1823-1891)
Starry Night
Starry night, beneath your veils, beneath your breeze and your scents, a sad lyre sighing, I dream of bygone loves.
Serene melancholy comes breaking out in the depths of my heart, and I hear my beloved’s soul quivering in the dreaming wood. Starry night…
I see once more, by our spring, your gaze, blue as the sky; this rose is your breath, and these stars your eyes. Starry night…
3 Le grillon Maurice Ravel
C’est l’heure où, las d’errer, l’insecte nègre revient de promenade et répare avec soin le désordre de son domaine.
D’abord il ratisse ses étroites allées de sable.
Il fait du bran de scie qu’il écarte au seuil de sa retraite.
Il lime la racine de cette grande herbe propre à le harceler.
Il se repose.
Puis il remonte sa minuscule montre.
A-t-il fini? Est-elle cassée? Il se repose encore un peu.
Il rentre chez lui et ferme sa porte.
Longtemps il tourne sa clef dans la serrure délicate.
Et il écoute:
Point d’alarme dehors.
Mais il ne se trouve pas en sûreté.
Et comme par une chaînette dont la poulie grince, il descend jusqu’au fond de la terre.
On n’entend plus rien.
Dans la campagne muette, les peupliers se dressent comme des doigts en l’air et désignent la lune.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
The Cricket
The hour has come when, tired of roving, the black insect returns from his excursion and carefully puts his house in order.
First of all he rakes his narrow paths of sand.
He makes a pile of sawdust which he pushes up to the doorstep of his lair.
He files the root of a tall grass that was perfect for annoying him.
He takes a rest.
Then he winds up his tiny watch.
Has he finished? Is it broken? He takes another little rest.
He goes inside and shuts the door.
He takes a long time to turn the key in the delicate little lock.
And he listens:
No danger outside.
But he does not feel safe.
And as if on a little, creaking pulley and chain, he descends to the depths of the earth.
Nothing more is heard.
In the silent countryside, the poplars rise like fingers in the air and point at the moon.
4 Claire de lune Gabriel Fauré
Votre âme est un paysage choisi, Que vont charmants masques et bergamasques, Jouant du luth et dansant, et quasi Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques!
Tout en chantant, sur le mode mineur, L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur, Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune!
Au calme clair de lune, triste et beau, Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres, Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau, Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres!
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
Moonlight
Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, That play on lutes and dance and have an air Of being sad in their fantastic trim.
The while they celebrate in minor strain Triumphant love, effective enterprise, They have an air of knowing all is vain, –And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,
The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone, That makes to dream the birds upon the tree, And in their polished basins of white stone The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.
tr. Gertrude Hall Brownell (1863-1961)
5 The Night Peter Warlock
Most holy Night, that still dost keep The keys of all the doors of sleep, To me when my tired eyelids close Give thou repose.
And let the far lament of them
That chaunt the dead day’s requiem Make in my ears, who wakeful lie, Soft lullaby.
Let them that guard the hornèd moon
By my bedside their memories croon. So shall I have new dreams and blest In my brief rest.
Fold your great wings about my face, Hide dawning from my resting-place, And cheat me with your false delight, Most Holy Night.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
6 Tired Ralph Vaughan Williams
Sleep, and I’ll be still as another sleeper holding you in my arms, glad that you lie so still at last.
This sheltering midnight is our meeting place, no passion or despair or hope divide me from your side.
I shall remember the firelight on your sleeping face,
I shall remember shadows growing deeper as the fire fell to ashes and the minutes passed.
Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007)
7
Dream-Song Richard Rodney Bennett
Sunlight, moonlight, Twilight, starlight –
Gloaming at the close of day, And an owl calling, Cool dews falling In a wood of oak and may.
Lantern-light, taper-light, Torchlight, no-light: Darkness at the shut of day, And lions roaring, Their wrath pouring In wild waste places far away.
Elf-light, bat-light, Touchwood-light and toad-light, And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey, And a small face smiling In a dream’s beguiling In a world of wonders far away.
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
8 Auf der Bruck Franz Schubert
Frisch trabe sonder Ruh und Rast, Mein gutes Roß, durch Nacht und Regen! Was scheust du dich vor Busch und Ast Und strauchelst auf den wilden Wegen?
Dehnt auch der Wald sich tief und dicht, Doch muß er endlich sich erschließen; Und freundlich wird ein fernes Licht Uns aus dem dunkeln Tale grüßen.
Wohl könnt ich über Berg und Feld
Auf deinem schlanken Rücken fliegen Und mich am bunten Spiel der Welt, An holden Bildern mich vergnügen; Manch Auge lacht mir traulich zu, Und beut mit Frieden, Lieb und Freude, Und dennoch eil’ ich ohne Ruh, Zurück, zurück zu meinem Leide.
Denn schon drei Tage war ich fern
Von ihr, die ewig mich gebunden; Drei Tage waren Sonn und Stern’ Und Erd und Himmel mir verschwunden. Von Lust und Leiden, die mein Herz Bei ihr bald heilten, bald zerrissen, Fühlt’ ich drei Tage nur den Schmerz, Und ach, die Freude mußt ich missen!
Weit sehn wir über Land und See Zur wärmer Flur den Vogel fliegen; Wie sollte denn die Liebe je In ihrem Pfade sich betrügen?
Drum trabe mutig durch die Nacht, Und schwinden auch die dunkeln Bahnen, Der Sehnsucht helles Auge wacht, Und sicher führt mich süßes Ahnen.
Ernst Schulze (1789-1817)
At Die Bruck
Trot briskly without rest, my good horse, through night and through rain! Why do you shy at bush and branch and stumble on the wild paths? Though the forest stretches deep and dense, it must finally open up; and a distant light will greet us kindly out of the dark valley.
I can fly over mountain and field on your slender back and enjoy the world’s colourful vistas. Many an eye laughs intimately at me, with peace, love and joy; and yet I hurry without rest, back to my grief.
For three days now I have been far away from her to whom I am eternally bound; for three days sun and star and earth and heavens were missing for me. Of the delight and grief, that when I was with her, now healed, now tore my heart, for three days I have only felt the pain, and oh!, the joy I had to miss!
We see the bird fly far over land and sea to warm pastures, how then should love ever deceive itself in its path? So trot bravely through the night! Although the dark tracks may fade, the bright eye of yearning still watches, and sweet foreboding guides me safely.
Note: ‘Die Bruck’ is a wooded hilltop near Göttingen translation © Richard Morris (www.franzschubert.org.uk)
9 Um Mitternacht Hugo Wolf
Gelassen stieg die Nacht an’s Land, Lehnt träumend an der Berge Wand, Ihr Auge sieht die gold’ne Wage nun Der Zeit in gleichen Schalen stille ruhn; Und kecker rauschen die Quellen hervor, Sie singen der Mutter, der Nacht, ins Ohr Vom Tage, Vom heute gewesenen Tage.
Das uralt alte Schlummerlied, Sie achtet’s nicht, sie ist es müd’; Ihr klingt des Himmels Bläue süßer noch, Der flücht’gen Stunden gleichgeschwung’nes Joch. Doch immer behalten die Quellen das Wort, Es singen die Wasser im Schlafe noch fort Vom Tage, Vom heute gewesenen Tage.
Eduard Mörike (1804-1875)
At Midnight
Calmly the Night climbs over the landscape, leans dreaming on the mountain wall: her eyes behold now the golden scales of time at rest, with pans equally balanced; and the springs rush boldly, they sing in the ear of their mother Night, of the day that has been today.
She heeds not the ancient old lullaby, she is tired; to her the blue of heaven sounds sweeter now, the equal-curved yoke of the fugitive hours. But the springs still keep on with their speaking, the water goes on singing amid sleep, of the day that has been today.
10 Schon streckt’ ich aus im Bett Wolf
Schon streckt’ ich aus im Bett die müden Glieder, Da tritt dein Bildniß vor mich hin, du Traute. Gleich spring ich auf, fahr’ in die Schuhe wieder Und wandre durch die Stadt mit meiner Laute. Ich sing’ und spiele, daß die Straße schallt; So Manche lauscht vorüber bin ich bald.
So manches Mädchen hat mein Lied gerührt, Indeß der Wind schon Sang und Klang entführt.
Paul Heyse (1830-1914), after the Italian
No sooner had I stretched out my weary limbs in bed than your image came before me, my dear one. There and then I jump up, put my shoes back on and go wandering through town with my lute. The street re-echoes what I sing and play; so many listen, but I soon go past. So many girls have been stirred by my song, even as the wind is carrying my singing and playing away.
11 Mandoline Fauré
Les donneurs de sérénades
Et les belles écouteuses
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.
C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte, Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre, Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte Cruelle fit maint vers tendre.
Leurs courtes vestes de soie, Leurs longues robes à queues, Leur élégance, leur joie
Et leurs molles ombres bleues,
Tourbillonnent dans l’extase
D’une lune rose et grise, Et la mandoline jase
Parmi les frissons de brise.
Verlaine
The courtly serenaders, The beauteous listeners, Sit idling ’neath the branches
A balmy zephyr stirs.
It’s Tircis and Aminta, Clitandre, – ever there! –
Damis of melting sonnets
To many a frosty fair.
Their trailing flowery dresses, Their fine beflowered coats, Their elegance and lightness, And shadows blue, – all floats
And mingles, – circling, wreathing, In moonlight opaline, While through the zephyr’s harping Tinkles the mandoline.
tr. Gertrude Hall Brownell
12 Sérénade toscane Fauré
Ô toi que berce un rêve enchanteur,
Tu dors tranquille en ton lit solitaire, Éveille-toi, regarde le chanteur, Esclave de tes yeux, dans la nuit claire! Éveille-toi mon âme, ma pensée, Entends ma voix par la brise emportée:
Entends ma voix chanter!
Entends ma voix pleurer, dans la rosée!
Sous ta fenêtre en vain ma voix expire. Et chaque nuit je redis mon martyre, Sans autre abri que la voûte étoilée.
Le vent brise ma voix et la nuit est glacée: Mon chant s’éteint en un accent suprême,
Ma lèvre tremble en murmurant ‘je t’aime’.
Je ne peux plus chanter!
Ah! daigne te montrer! daigne apparaitre!
Si j’étais sûr que tu ne veux paraître
Je m’en irais, pour t’oublier, demander au sommeil
De me bercer jusqu’au matin vermeil,
De me bercer jusqu’à ne plus t’aimer!
Romain Bussine (1830-1899), after the Italian Tuscan Serenade
You whom an entrancing dream is cradling, you sleep quietly in your bed alone: wake up, behold the singer, your eyes’ slave, in the bright night! Wake, my soul, my thought, hear my voice carried on the breeze, hear my voice sing! Hear my voice crying in the dew. Under your window my voice dies in vain. And every night I tell my martyrdom again, with no other shelter but the starry vault. The wind breaks my voice and the night is ice-cold: my song expires on its utmost strain, my lip trembles as it whispers ‘I love you’. I can sing no more! Ah, deign to show yourself! Deign to appear! Were I sure that you have no desire to appear I would go away, to forget you, to ask of sleep that it
cradle me until the morning turns red, to cradle me until I love you no more!
13 Nicht länger kann ich singen Wolf
Nicht länger kann ich singen, denn der Wind
Weht stark und macht dem Atem was zu schaffen.
Auch fürcht’ ich, daß die Zeit umsonst verrinnt.
Ja wär’ ich sicher, ging’ ich jetzt nicht schlafen.
Ja wüßt’ ich was, würd’ ich nicht heim spazieren
Und einsam diese schöne Zeit verlieren.
Heyse, after the Italian
No more can I sing, for the wind blows strong and makes breathing difficult. I fear too that time slips away wasted. Were I sure, I would still not go to bed. If I knew, I would not walk home, and lose this beautiful hour alone.
14 Sonnet (2011) Raymond Yiu
Each common object too, the house, the grove, The street, the face, the ware in the window, seems
Alien and sad, the wreck of perished dreams; Painfully present, yet remote in love. The day goes down in rain, the winds blow wide. I leave the town; I climb the mountain side, Striving from stumps and stones to wring relief, And in the senseless anger of my grief, I rave and weep, I roar to the unmoved skies;
But the wild tempest carries away my cries. Then back I turn to hide my face in sleep,
Again with dawn the same dull round to sweep, And buy and sell and prate and laugh and chide, As if she had not lived, or had not died.
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
15 Oh! quand je dors Franz Liszt
Oh! quand je dors, viens auprès de ma couche,
Comme à Pétrarque apparaissait Laura, Et qu’en passant ton haleine me touche...
Soudain ma bouche
S’entrouvrira!
Sur mon front morne où peut-être s’achève
Un songe noir qui trop longtemps dura, Que ton regard comme un astre se lève,
Et soudain mon rêve Rayonnera!
Puis sur ma lèvre où voltige une flamme, Éclair d’amour que Dieu même épura,
Pose un baiser, et d’ange deviens femme,
Soudain mon âme
S’éveillera!
Oh viens! comme à Pétrarque apparaissait
Laura!
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Oh! when I sleep, come near my resting-place,
As Laura came to bless her poet’s heart, And let thy breath in passing touch my face –
At once a space
My lips will part.
And on my brow where too long weighed supreme
A vision – haply spent now – black as night, Let thy look as a star arise and beam –
At once my dream
Will seem of light.
Then press my lips, where plays a flame of bliss –
A pure and holy love-light – and forsake
The angel for the woman in a kiss –
At once, I wis,
My soul will wake!
Oh! Come, as Laura came to bless her poet’s heart!
tr. William W. Tomlinson (19th century)
16 Und steht Ihr früh am Morgen auf Wolf
Und steht Ihr früh am Morgen auf vom Bette, Scheucht Ihr vom Himmel alle Wolken fort, Die Sonne lockt Ihr auf die Berge dort, Und Engelein erscheinen um die Wette Und bringen Schuh und Kleider Euch sofort.
Dann, wenn Ihr ausgeht in die heil’ge Mette, So zieht Ihr alle Menschen mit Euch fort, Und wenn Ihr naht der benedeiten Stätte, So zündet Euer Blick die Lampen an.
Weihwasser nehmt Ihr, macht des Kreuzes Zeichen
Und netzet Eure weiße Stirn sodann
Und neiget Euch und beugt die Knie ingleichen –
O wie holdselig steht Euch alles an!
Wie hold und selig hat Euch Gott begabt,
Die Ihr der Schönheit Kron’ empfangen habt! Wie hold und selig wandelt Ihr im Leben; Der Schönheit Palme ward an Euch gegeben. Heyse, after the Italian
And when you rise from your bed early in the morning, straight away you drive all the clouds from the sky; the sun you entice onto the mountains yonder, and angels jump to be the first to bring your shoes and clothes. Then, should you go out to holy mass, you draw along all mankind in your wake, and as you come near to the blessed place, your glance lights up the lamps. You take holy water, make the sign of the cross, then wet your white brow, and bow as you genuflect – oh how sweetly it all becomes you. What sweet, holy gifts has God given you, who have received beauty’s crown! How sweet and holy is your progress through life; beauty’s palm has been given you.
17 Morgen! Richard Strauss
Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen, Und auf dem Wege, den ich gehen werde, Wird uns, die Glücklichen, sie wieder einen Inmitten dieser sonnenatmenden Erde…
Und zu dem Strand, dem weiten, wogenblauen, Werden wir still und langsam niedersteigen, Stumm werden wir uns in die Augen schauen, Und auf uns sinkt des Glükkes stummes Schweigen…
John Henry Mackay (1864-1933)
Tomorrow!
And tomorrow the sun will shine once more, and on the way that I shall go, will once again unite us happy ones, in the midst of the sunbreathing world. And we will quietly, slowly go down to the wide, wave-blue shore, silently gaze in each other’s eyes, as over us settles bliss’ quiet silence…
Encores
18 Der Mond kommt still gegangen
Clara Schumann
Der Mond kommt still gegangen
Mit seinem gold’nen Schein, Da schläft in holdem Prangen
Die müde Erde ein.
Und auf den Lüften schwanken
Aus manchem treuen Sinn
Viel tausend Liebesgedanken
Über die Schläfer hin.
Und drunten im Tale, da funkeln
Die Fenster von Liebchens Haus; Ich aber blicke im Dunkeln
Still in die Welt hinaus.
Emanuel Geibel (1815-1884)
The moon comes on its way silently with its golden shine; in sweet splendour the weary world falls asleep. And on the breezes, from so many faithful hearts, waft thousand upon thousand thoughts of love over those who sleep. And down there in the valley the
windows of my love’s house are gleaming; but in darkness I gaze silently out at the world.
19 Viens! Les gazons sont verts!
Charles Gounod
Si tu dors, jeune fille,
Debout, debout! voici le soleil!
Chasse de tes yeux l’indolent sommeil!
C’est l’heure du réveil!
Suis moi, vive et gentille!
Pieds nus, viens! Les gazons sont verts!
Les ruisseaux jaseurs par les bois déserts Promènent leurs flots clairs!
Jules Barbier (1825-1901), after the Spanish of Gil Vicente (c.1465 – c.1536)
Come! The swards are green!
If you’re asleep, young lass, get up! Get up! Look, the sun! Chase away idle sleep from your eyes! It’s time to wake! Follow me, lively, fair one! Come barefoot! The swards are green! Through empty woods the babbling streams are leading their clear torrents!
Biographies
Baritone William Berger has distinguished himself internationally as a singer of the highest calibre. He is a graduate and Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and an alumnus of the Young Singers Programme at English National Opera.
His rich timbre and charismatic stage presence have led critics, including Gramophone Magazine, to praise William as ‘one of the best of our younger baritones’. His intelligent approach to characterization and interpretation led William to collect a multitude of awards, such as the 2010 Ernst Haefliger Competition in Switzerland, the Kathleen Ferrier Society Bursary for Young Singers, Countess of Munster Trust Scholarship,
Musicians Benevolent Fund Grant and the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Award.
William has performed at the Liceu in Barcelona, Vlaamse Opera, Lucerne Opera, Edinburgh Festival and the Festival Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence. On the operatic stage he has performed roles by Handel, Haydn, Janácek, Monteverdi, Mozart and Puccini. He has given recitals at prestigious venues such as Wigmore Hall and at the Lucerne International Festival. In concert he has appeared with the Cape Town Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English Consort, La Nuova Musica, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Baroque San Francisco. He appears as soloist in Ludus Baroque’s recording of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast (Delphian DCD34094).
Also available on Delphian
Iain Burnside enjoys a unique reputation as pianist and broadcaster, forged through his commitment to the song repertoire and his collaborations with leading international singers. In recent seasons such artists have included Susan Bickley, Rebecca Evans, Ann Murray and Ailish Tynan; John Mark Ainsley, Andrew Kennedy and Mark Padmore; William Dazeley, Bryn Terfel and Roderick Williams.
The Shadow Side, a disc of contemporary Scottish song with soprano Irene Drummond, came out on Delphian in 2011 (DCD34099) to great critical acclaim, while 2012 saw similar praise for the release of The Airmen, featuring the songs of Martin Shaw, with Sophie Bevan, Andrew Kennedy and Roderick Williams (Delphian DCD34105).
His extensive recording portfolio reflects Iain’s passion for British music: the complete songs of Gerald Finzi, together with Butterworth, Gurney, Ireland and Vaughan Williams on Naxos; Britten, Tippett, Herbert Hughes, F.G. Scott and Judith Weir on Signum, and Richard Rodney Bennett on NMC. The NMC Songbook received a Gramophone Award. In 2012 Albion Records will issue a solo disc of Vaughan Williams and Gurney.
Iain’s broadcasting career covers both radio and TV and has been honoured with a Sony Radio Award. Acclaimed as a programmer, Iain has devised innovative recitals combining music and poetry, presented with huge success in Barcelona and Brussels with actors Simon Russell Beale, Fiona Shaw and Harriet Walter. He is Research Associate at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His first play, A Soldier and a Maker, premiered at the Barbican Centre, London in April 2012.
The Airmen: Martin Shaw Songs
Sophie Bevan soprano / Andrew Kennedy tenor / Roderick Williams baritone
Iain Burnside piano DCD34105
Despite a compositional career spanning both World Wars, remarkably little is known about Martin Shaw’s music. It has yet to enjoy the revival of interest that has benefited the legacies of close friends such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. His songs range from the whimsical and effervescent to the deeply melancholic, and will be a revelation to many. In rescuing these gems from obscurity, Iain Burnside and his singers have given new life to an unjustly neglected figure.
‘Captivating … beguiling … massively enjoyable disc’
– BBC Review, February 2011
Handel: Alexander’s Feast
Ludus Baroque / Sophie Bevan soprano / Ed Lyon tenor / William Berger bass
Richard Neville-Towle conductor DCD34094
Handel’s musical illustration of Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, first performed in 1736, was a critical and popular success. A day after the premiere, the London Daily Post reported ‘Never was upon the like Occasion so numerous and splendid an Audience at any Theatre in London, there being at least 1300 Persons present.’
‘This lovely oratorio reflects the power of music refracted through the lens of myth, with Handel brilliantly colouring his musical canvas … Ed Lyon reaffirms his claim to be one of the pre-eminent Baroque tenors of our time’
– The Independent, March 2011, ALBUM OF THE WEEK
‘Some of Britain’s best new talents … are on dazzling form and there is some superb singing from the chorus. “The many rend the skies with loud applause,” they sing. And so they should’ – The Observer, February 2011
