Charm and Melancholy
J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 07/06/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Reynaldo Hahn (1875-1947) is little known today. When he is remembered it is primarily for two songs, 'L'heure exquise,' and 'Si mes vers avaient des ailes,' two of the most beautiful French songs in the repertoire. In his day, though, he was a musical Parisian man about town. He had come to Paris from his native Venezuela as a toddler and never left. He studied composition at the Conservatoire with Jules Massenet. He conducted at the Opéra Comique, wrote operettas, the most remembered of which is 'Ciboulette,' and many songs. He wrote a sparkling piano concerto for which he was the piano soloist at the première. He had a good baritone voice and sang his songs, always with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, at many élite private gatherings. He met Proust in his teens, they were lovers for a time, remained friends for life, and he is generally considered to be the model for Jean Santeuil in Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' ('À la recherche du temps perdu'). This 2-CD collection of 53 piano miniatures was written between 1898 and 1911 and published by Heugel & Cie. in 1912. In the evocative title, 'Le Rossignol éperdu,' the 'rossignol' ('nightingale') is undoubtedly the composer; the adjective 'éperdu' may mean, variously, 'bewildered,''ecstatic,' or 'distraught', and perhaps in this case all of these. The pieces, some of them only a page long, are rather arbitrarily collected into four suites: I. Première Suite, II. Orient, III. Carnet de voyage (Travel Diary), and IV. Versailles. Most of the pieces have a poetic epigraph from writers such as Verlaine, Musset, Goethe, Mme. de Sevigné, Molière.Hahn was a conservative composer whose musical language rarely went beyond that of, say, Fauré. Everything he wrote is meticulously crafted. The tone of these pieces is a gently nostalgic melancholy. In the only written comment he ever made about these pieces he said he had written them with 'suppressed tears.' The whole set has never been recorded before as far as I know. It is astounding, actually, that at age 86 Earl Wild would undertake this project. One gathers that he had to learn most of them for the first time. He brings his usual grace and musicality to the pieces. His limpid playing brings out the occasional unusual harmonic twists. His legendary legato is at the service of the songful lines of Hahn's lapidary 'poèmes.'I would pick for particular attention the sweetly mysterious 'Mirage,' the slowly accelerating stirring of 'Le Reveil de Flore' ('The Awakening of Spring'), the gentle fanfares of 'Le Jardin de Pétrarque,' the sensuality of 'Ivresse' ('Ecstasy'), the gently rocking 'En Caïque' ('In a Boat'). I suppose a point of comparison would be the miniatures of Federico Mompou or even of Erik Satie. But Hahn had his own voice.Hahn is probably not a great composer. He knew what he could do, though, and he did it very well. His miniatures, each lapidary, are to be treasured one by one. (Indeed, I would strongly urge you to listen to only a few at a time.) We are indebted to Earl Wild for making this recording. It is unlikely to be bettered.Review by Scott Morrison"
This disc has been nominated for a 2002 GRAMMY award
J Scott Morrison | 01/25/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The legendary 87-year-old Grammy Award-winning dean of pianists has given us a world-premiere recording. This is a very rare collection of 53 solo piano compositions by the French composer Reynaldo Hahn. This extraordinary group of miniatures reflects varying impressions, sketches and thoughts during Hahn's countless travels. Passionate Impressionism."
Finally !
Charlus | NYC | 12/12/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Rather than repeat word-by-word the wonderful words of Mr Morrison, I will merely exclaim--YES! I have been waiting for a complete recording of this collection for decades, and never expected that its disk début would be left to the magical hands of none other than Earl Wilde (b. 1915, Pittsburgh.) A connoisseur's delight, all around, and in gorgeous recorded sound."
