Reynaldo (Hahn's) jet d'eau

[Mandryka]

Eureka! Found a listing

01. R. HAHN - L'enamour�e (lyrics by T. de Banville)
02. R. HAHN - La paix (lyrics by T. de Banville)
03. R. HAHN - Offrande (lyrics by P. Verlaine)
04. Joseph DARCIER - La Tour Saint-Jacques (lyrics by E. Hachin)
05. ANONYMOUS - Musette (17th century)
06. Emmanuel CHABRIER - L'Ile heureuse (lyrics by E. Mikha�l)
07. Charles GOUNOD - Le premier jour de mai (lyrics by J. Passerat)
08. R. HAHN - Offrande (lyrics by P. Verlaine)
09. R. HAHN - "Qu'est-ce qu'il faut pour �tre heureux", from O mon bel
inconnu
10. R. HAHN - L'heure exquise (lyrics by P. Verlaine)
11. R. HAHN - L'enamour�e (lyrics by T. de Banville)
12. R. HAHN - Phyllis (lyrics by Leconte de Lisle)
13. Emile PALADILHE - Psych� (lyrics by P. Corneille)

01-08. Reynaldo Hahn sings and accompanies himself on the piano.
01-03: recorded in 1919 for the "Compagnie Fran�aise du Gramophone"
04-08: recorded in 1909 for the "Compagnie Fran�aise du Gramophone"
09. Arletty's voice is unique and easy to spot! She sings this duet with
R. Hahn.
recorded in 1934 for Path�
10-13. Arthur Endr�ze (baritone), Reynaldo Hahn (piano)
recorded in 1937 for Path�

[Mandryka]

In my head, it's Proust playing the piano. They're in the cork lined bedroom, it's filled with cigarette smoke. Or maybe opium. If anyone wants the recordings, tagged (!), PM me. He was not a great singer, but the whole thing is unbelievably evocative.

[MusicTurner]

I didn't know of these recordings, own some modern stuff, but found it interesting, so tried looking them up.
Thanks for bringing the attention to them.

[ritter]

In mid-November, Gallimard will be releasing an "anthology" (416 pages) of Reynaldo Hahn's diaries, spanning the years 1890 - trough 1945. The book is edited by leading Hahn specialist Philippe Blay and the great Proust scholar Jean-Yves Tadié.



I presume some extracts of these journals will have appeared in Hahn's lifetime in the (long OOP) book Notes - Journal d'un musicien (Plon, Paris, 1933 - 293 pages).

[ritter]

Interesting comments by our fellow GMGer @Todd on William Youn's recently released recording of Hahn's Piano Concerto (plus the pianist's own arrangements of À Chloris and L'Heure exquise for solo piano, and works by Fauré and Nadia Boulanger).

Ridiculous.  That's a word that popped into mind multiple times while listening to the latest from William Youn, or as I prefer to think of him, Korean Piano Jesus.  Hot off belatedly devouring his third Schubert sonata installment and passionately hating myself for waiting so long to buy it, I snapped up and listened to this collection of French music for piano and orchestra, with some solo piano fare tossed in.  Most of the music is new to me, but some is old hat.

The set opens with something new to me, Reynaldo Hahn's Piano Concerto in E Major.  Now, I know me some Hahn, but only songs.  Without fail, they sound meltingly beautiful, and whenever I spin them, they beguile for the duration of the recording.  This here concerto is cut from the same cloth.  It opens with the soloist spinning out beautiful music, and then the band enters, winds dominating, in music that sounds so purely charming and beautiful it is ridiculous.  The movement slowly unfolds and dances around until the second movement Danse, which sounds so elegant and refined that it is ridiculous.  Finally, in the closing movement, starting with a reverie, the gentle, soft, hazy strings overwhelm the listener with impossible levels of beauty, and so does the solo playing.  It is ridiculous.  As the movement winds on, with some boisterous marches, wide dynamics swings, and a fleeting, almost vaudevillian feel, it imparts nearly limitless music enjoyment.  It is ridiculous.  While the recording is definitely modern, it most certainly does not offer clinical clarity of each instrument; everything sounds beautifully blended.  There are not too many recordings of this piece, though Shani Diluka recorded it recently, so perhaps that recording needs to find its way to my ears.

Faure's well-known Ballade, Op 19 follows.  As with pretty much everything he wrote, the music sounds either beautiful or stupid beautiful. Youn plays with nutso refinement and tonal gradation, with impossibly gentle dynamic changes.  Listen to his gentle runs.  They are so subtle it is ridiculous.  The orchestral accompaniment, with a cello peeking out here, the winds there, bewitches while KPJ spins out limitless beauty.  It's just so ridiculous.  (Seriously, if any pianist alive and recording should record every note of Faure's piano music, it's KPJ.  I mean, sure, Jean-Rodolphe Kars is alive, but the Father will not be making any more recordings.) 

KPJ then treats the ridiculously lucky listener to his own arrangement of Hahn's À Chloris.  In the brief three minutes, it's like hearing Bach filtered through a hyperromantic sensibility, stripped of the usual pesky voice muddying things, with the result being pure musical beauty.  But it sounds rough, ugly, and gauche compared to KPJ's transcription of L'heure exquise.  So sublime, so flawless, so hypnotic, the listener is forced to surrender to the sheer ridiculousness of it all. 

Low strings bellow beauteously to open Nadia Boulanger's Fantaisie variée pour piano et Orchestre.  The music sounds like a literally perfect stereotype of Fin de siècle music.  Thick and often orchestrally opaque, with piano writing that nearly mimics organ writing in places, the music floods the listener.  Slight hints of Straussian goodness can be heard, some Gounod, too.  Instruments jump in and out, flitting by.  While French, there's an almost Russian excess sentiment, a Rachy gooiness that's so ridiculously mesmerizing that one wallows in the music as it moves from one (probably too) thickly textured variation to the next.  And are those hints of Ravelian waltzes one detects?  Probably.  It is easy to hear why this is not core rep, but at least as delivered here, one certainly thinks it deserves a bit more love than it has received to date.

Faure's Fantaisie for piano & orchestra, Op 111 follows, and it would be ridiculous to think it's not every bit as good as the Ballade.  KPJ produces a stream of beauty.  And then, to cap everything off, is his arrangement of Après un rêve for solo piano.  This piece, which also works well for Cello and Piano, is played in beautiful fashion, but also with more drive and tension than expected, though on evidence of this (and all prior recordings), KPJ can't produce an ugly sound no matter how loud he plays.  How ridiculous.

So, here's nearly ninety minutes of musical gorgeousness and excess too good to be true.  Yet it's true.  No, the non-core pieces are not quite elevated to core rep levels, though the rendition of the Hahn as played here comes pretty gosh darned close.  The whole thing just washes over the listener, generating giddiness and unlimited satisfaction.  Is this a purchase of the year?  It would be ridiculous if it were not. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Interesting comments by our fellow GMGer @Todd on William Youn's recently released recording of Hahn's Piano Concerto (plus the pianist's own arrangements of À Chloris and L'Heure exquise for solo piano, and works by Fauré and Nadia Boulanger).

@Todd and @ritter I'll have to see whether or not I can listen to at least some of this recording.  I've enjoyed the CD that I have of his songs (with Susan Graham) and I particularly remember being enchanted by the song and her recording of À Chloris.  Don't know his piano concerto, but am intrigued.  Love what I've heard by Fauré too.  Heard of Nadia Boulanger, but don't know her works.

PD

[Pohjolas Daughter]

À Chloris:

There's also a video uploaded by the artist which isn't available to watch in the US, but this one (uploaded by Sony) is.

It's lovely! 

PD

p.s.  Sorry, I've gone a bit off-track!

EDIT:  Looks like Sony uploaded a number of tracks from that album!

[Brian]

I love the piano concerto coupling of Hahn's concerto with the rather more swashbuckling/extrovert concerto by Massenet on Hyperion. Just listened to Youn's new version and can't insightfully comment on the differences - they seemed very similar to me. Of course, the Youn pairings are very different...the encore miniatures are lovely.

[Symphonic Addict]

The ballet Le Dieu bleu is to be released tomorrow. I heard some excerpts and it sounds amazing and very exotic!

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

The ballet Le Dieu bleu is to be released tomorrow. I heard some excerpts and it sounds amazing and very exotic!

Nice! Thanks for the information. I'm sure @ritter will be interested in this release as well.

[ritter]

Great to see Le Dieu bleu finally recorded. Thanks @Symphonic Addict and @Der lächelnde Schatten for bringing this to my attention (I wasn't aware of this at all).

The première of Hahn's ballet seems to have been a major event at the time, but then fell into complete oblivion; the music seems rarely (if ever) to have been performed since then. At least the detailed scenario, by Cocteau, can be read in the Pléiade edition if the author's theatrical works .

I'll order this right away!!! 

[Symphonic Addict]

Finally I gave Le Dieu bleu my first listen. Ridiculously gorgeous. The kind of works I enjoy immensely for its sheer sense of magic, fantasy and exoticism, let alone the delectable orchestral display. Danse des Souvenirs, Clair de lune, Le dieu bleu. Danse et scène and the sublime last number L'escalier d'or et la montée du Dieu were my favorite parts. An extraordinary discovery in this year.

This ballet, his Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto, String Quartet No. 2 and Piano Quintet have been the most impressive works I've heard by him so far.

[ritter]

I'm just back home from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, after visiting the comprehensive exhibition on "Proust and the Arts". 

As could be expected, Reynaldo Hahn's name is prominent in several of the rooms. His portrait by Lucie Lambert (owned by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France) was on display.



In one room, dedicated to Proust's (and Hahn's) interest in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, a vintage print could be seen of a photograph by Waléry of Vaslav Nijinsky in Le Dieu bleu (a work we've been discussing here on GMG recently because it has finally been recorded).



Also, it was nice to see "in the flesh" Jacques-Émile Blanche's iconic portrait of a young Proust (on loan from the Musée d'Orsay).