Born in Rome, the French
composer Philippe Hersant studied with
André Jolivet, alongside literary
studies - particular fascinations were
with Joyce and Borges. His early work
was apparently avant-garde in style,
but in 1978 he disowned – and partially
destroyed – all this earlier music.
Since then he has written works which
are essentially tonal in idiom. He has
worked a good deal in the theatre, notably
with directors such as Jean-François
Peyret and Jean Jourdheuil. He wrote
much-praised music for Kader Belarbi’s
Ballet Hurlevent (Wuthering
Heights), produced by Paris Opera
Ballet in 2002. His music for films
includes three films by Nicolas Philibert:
Un animal, des animaux
(1994), Qui sait (1998) and Ĕtre
et avoir (2002).
Hersant’s concert music
includes two string quartets (1985 and
1988), the first of which was recorded
by he Quattuor Enesco on REM 311060,
the second by The Rosamonde Quartet
on ADDA 581280 along with works by Dutilleux
and Fenelon; two operas, including Le
Château des Carpathes (1989-91,
revised 2001), which has been recorded
twice, on ADES 202272 and Accord
465 493-2 (revised version); two cello
concertos (1989, 1996-7), the first
of which, with Siegfried Palm as soloist
with the Ensemble Alternance, conducted
by Arturo Tamayo was recorded on Harmonia
Mundi HMC 905216. And much else, too.
This seems, however, to be his first
appearance on the pages of MusicWeb.
The works on this present disc are written
in a musical idiom with obvious roots
in late German romanticism, perhaps
in Strauss in particular, though with
an awareness of later formal and harmonic
developments. I suspect that the music
of Henri Dutilleux means a lot to Hersant
and that it is partly through Dutilleux
that earlier presences such as Debussy
and Ravel make their marks on Hersant’s
writing. Much of the writing has a poetic,
inward quality, a sense of dream or
of distant memories recalled and reshaped.
Stylistically speaking, much of this
music could have been written fifty
or more years ago. But one feels that
in turning away from much in the last
half century’s music, Hersant has done
what is most important – he has been
true to his own sensibility and imagination.
The result is a musical voice which
speaks with conviction and coherence.
The Violin Concerto
is played here by the violinist who
commissioned it – Augustin Dumay. It
was premiered by Dumay and the Orchestre
National de France, conducted by Jonathan
Darlington, on 31 January 2004. It is
a predominantly slow, largely rhapsodic
piece, soaked in quiet melancholy. Technical
virtuosity is less in demand from the
soloist than are beauty and variety
of tone, and Dumay plays expressively
and evocatively throughout. I can’t
pretend that this is a work I found
especially striking or immediately exciting;
but it is one whose subtleties grow
on one with repeated listenings, and
there are a number of passages of genuine
beauty, full of inner longing, as the
piece moves slowly and gracefully through
and around some repeated motifs.
‘Der Wanderer’ sets
a poem by the Salzburg poet Georg Trakl
(1887-1914). In his booklet notes Hersant
tells us that us he was especially attracted
by the last two lines of Trakl’s poem:
"Jener kehrt wieder und wandelt
an grünem Gestade, / Schaukelt
auf schwarzem Gondelschiffchen durch
die verfallene Stadt". ("He
returns again and roams along green
banks, / Rocks in a little black gondola
through the derelict town" – translated
by Alexander Stillmark: Georg Trakl,
Poems and Prose, Libris, 2001).
Hersant writes: "This phrase immediately
reminded me of the unique and strange
universe of Franz Liszt’s final piano
pieces (La lugubre gondole, Nuages
gris). My piece is a kind of
barcarolle with an unstable and floating
harmony that comes to a close with a
vision of the end of the world".
Harsant’s setting captures very well
the mildly ‘gothic’ mood of Trakl’s
poem, where "the toad peers with
crystalline eyes" and "the
moon … sinks gleaming into sad waters".
Literary allusion and
cross-references to earlier musical
works also characterise the third piece
on this CD: ‘Streams: for Piano and
Orchestra’. Again it is played by the
soloist - Alice Ader – who gave the
first performance, the work having its
premiere on the 5 December 2001, when
Ader was the soloist with l’Orchestre
Nationale de Lyon, conducted by Janos
Fürst. The work – in five sections
– responds to Milton’s presentation,
in Book II of Paradise Lost of
the "four infernal rivers".
Section five has lines from the same
book of Milton’s epic as an epigraph:
Far off
from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth.
Picking up on the reference
to the "labyrinth", Hersant
incorporates audible references to a
number of other musical ‘labyrinths’
– such as Locatelli’s ‘Il Labirinto
armonico’ (his Concerto in D major for
violin, Op.3 No.12), Marin Marais’s
suite ‘Le Labirinthe’ (from Quatrième
Livre de pièces à une
et trois violes, of 1717) and Bach’s
Kleines harmonisches Labyrinth
(BWV 591). In this fifth section, the
solo piano develops a long, winding
musical line from opening to closing
bars, the sense of flowing water being
evoked alongside that of the untroubled,
slow discovery of a way through the
labyrinth. Knowing of Hersant’s interest
in the great Argentinian writer, one
suspects that there may well also be
an allusion to Borges’ recurrent fascination
with the labyrinth. In the four earlier
sections, alternations of tempo can
perhaps be understood as references
to the different qualities of what Milton
called "the baleful streams"
– "abhorred Styx",
"sad Acheron", "Cocytus,
named of lamentation loud" and
"fierce Phlegethon".
The dominant mood is, unsurprisingly,
somewhat dark, the pianist called upon
more for rich harmonic textures than
for dazzling fingerwork. Hersant, as
befits a composer with his background
in theatre and film, is a master in
the creation of mood and imaginative
picture, and this is an interesting
and rewarding work.
There is perhaps not
a great deal of variety of mood on this
disc; there is rather more darkness,
more evocation of night time and melancholy,
of the Miltonic underworld than all
will want to experience at a single
hearing. The CD is best heard a work
at a time. As such it is good to have
as a record of some aspects of the work
of an obviously very talented French
contemporary.
So far as I can judge
these are assured and intelligent performances.
The booklet notes contain useful – if
brief - comments by the composer on
each of the three works. It is unfortunate
that neither text nor translation of
the Trakl poem is included; nor are
there any biographical notes on composer
or performers.
Glyn Pursglove
for
details
1 Augustin Dumay (violin), Orchestre
National de France/Jonathan Darlington; 2
Chœur de Radio France/Michel Trenchant; Orchestre
National de France/Jonathan Darlington; 3
Alice Ader (piano), Orchestre Symphonique
de la Radio Danoise/Thomas Dausgaard 
