Pavane are to be congratulated on such a delightful
and adventurous French song recital distinguished by Jules Bastin’s
strong oaken tones blended with the accomplished, supple and
subtle accompaniments of Paule Van den Driessche. Bastin colours
his voice convincingly and imaginatively over a wide expressive
range from the romantic and plaintive to the commanding and
swaggering and from lovelorn whispers to robust wry humour.
It is a great pity that the parsimonious notes – one and one
third pages in English to cover 44 songs – mars this otherwise
admirable compilation. I will grouse some more about this further
down because I believe it is an important point of principle.
The recital begins with two favourite songs
by Saint-Saëns. The first, The Tournament of
King John, is the longest in the whole compilation and one
is full of wonder when recollecting that this rousing song was
composed when Saint-Saëns was only 17. Bastin enters into
the spirit of its OTT heroics, giving it all the wry bravado
of a Hollywood Errol Flynn romantic swashbuckler. Then there
is Saint-Saëns' chanson version of his Danse Macabre
with its zig-a-zig-a-zigs and clanking skeletons cavorting at
midnight round two naked illicit lovers with Bastin unhesitatingly
milking all its melodrama.
The delicacy and beautiful refinement of the
Fauré songs come next about the vastness of the sea and
embarkation and parting with subtle sea swells in the piano.
Bastin’s sensitive readings finely balance restraint and passion.
From romance we pass to comedy with the wickedly funny and ironic
evocations of Pierre Vellons’s five epitaphs. Eight brief but
penetrating and often comic sardonic vignettes come from the
pen of Jean Français: Le critique, for instance,
is wittily picky and condescending, and Le magistrat suisse
pompous and swaggering.
One of the most interesting and impressive
collections is Guy Ropartz’s Heine settings. Of these Pourquoi
vois-je pâlir impresses most strongly with Bastin
rising from the plaintive to the passionate paralleled by expressive
keyboard playing progressing from a languid subtly perfumed
evocation of the rose to the dejection of the Dies Irae quotation,
and to defiance before both pianist and singer end in sad resignation.
These four songs have a preoccupation with death but they are
never morbid and I must mention the imaginative treatment of
the mix of the funeral march and Dies Irae in the accompaniment
to Depuis que nul rayon.
When G.W. Pabst filmed Don Quixote in
1932 he planned to have the great bass Chaliapine play the part,
and to sing to texts written by Paul Morand. Several composers
were approached including Manuel de Falla, Ravel, Ibert and
Milhaud but only two of them actually worked on the project.
Ravel’s work was not used. Here we have the opportunity of hearing
the successful music of Ibert and that of Ravel. The Ravel songs
– Don Quixotte à Dulcinée are the more subtle,
the ‘Chanson romanesque’ has the odd nicely placed comic
dissonance to suggest the antics of the ageing suitor, and ‘Chanson
épique’ mixes the plaintive with rather weary
heroics; while ‘Chanson à bois’ has a comic swagger
with one or two telling hiccups in the accompaniment. Ibert’s
songs have a more overt Spanish flavour and immediacy that would
probably have had greater audience appeal. The only Chanson
à Dulcinée of the four has Quixote’s romantic
aspirations more straightforwardly pronounced.
The recital ends with the two sets of Poulenc
songs. The first set is another lot of comic and keenly observed
animal evocations: Le dromadaire, for instance, is clearly
the trudging drudge of the desert, and the complex pattern of
the gait of Le chèvre du Tibet is cleverly caught.
From Chansons gaillardes, I would just mention the typical
Poulenc insouciance in Madrigal and the gently lilting
of Sérénade enlivened by its sardonic edge.
But back to my grouse. If record companies
like Hyperion and, often, even the super budget Naxos, can provide
words for songs, there is really no excuse for such niggardly
booklet presentations as this. There is hardly any description
of any of the songs, just the briefest of texts on the composers
and the authors of the song settings. One might argue if the
words are really necessary? Well, yes they are needed to have
a proper appreciation of the subtleties and nuances of the songs.
Or it might be argued that with a bit of enterprise one might
track down the words [and hopefully(?)] the translations from
internet sources but really who wants to spend hours doing this,
or rummaging through music libraries (even assuming you live
near an adequate one). The least that Pavane (and other record
companies for this criticism is not just levelled at Pavane)
could do would be to create a website with all the songs’ words
and their translations into main languages, with a note in a
prominent place on the album so that their customers are directed
to that web site. But it really only applies to people who have
computers and internet connections. What about the many others
who do not have such facilities? High time the record companies
got their act together and I have in my sights the majors who
think they can get away with murder when they reissue back catalogue
material – even operas with no words, not even an adequate synopsis
- at mid-price this is unforgivable.
Ian Lace
Jules Bastin (bass)
with Paule van den Driessche (piano) 