MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

REVIEW


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

Buy through MusicWeb
for £ postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound Clips and Downloads

Satie’s Socrate - French Song Cycles -
Jacques de MENASCE (1905 – 1960)
1. Deux Lettres d’Enfants (1954) [2:29]
Lettre de Béatrice
Lettre de Christian
Emmanuel CHABRIER (1841 – 1894)
from Six Mélodies (1890)
2. Les Cigales [2:49]
3. Villanelles des petits canards [2:08]
4. Pastorales des cochons roses [4:33]
5. Ballade des gros dondons [3:11]
Arthur HONEGGER (1892 – 1955)
Saluste du Bartas (1941)
6. Le Château du Bartas [1:10]
7. Tout le long de la Baïse [1:26]
8. Le départ [1:06]
9. La promenade [1:24]
10. Nérac en fête [0:46]
11. Duo [2:11]
Albert ROUSSEL (1869 – 1937)
12. Le Bachelier de Salamanque (1919) [1:40]
Francis POULENC (1899 – 1963)
13. ’C’ (1943) [2:43]
14. A sa guitare (1935) [2:47]
Erik SATIE (1866 – 1925)
Trois Mélodies (1916)
15. Daphënéo [1:19]
16. La Statue de Bronze [1:53]
17. Le Chapelier [1:10]
Ludions (1923)
18. Air du Rat [0:49]
19. Spleen [0:47]
20. La Grenouille américaine [1:04]
21. Air du Poète [0:49]
22. Chanson du Chat [0:47]
Socrate. Drame Symphonique avec voix (1919)
23. I. Portrait de Socrate (Le Banquet) [5:52]
24. II. Bords de L’Ilissus (Phédon) [7:37]
25. III. Mort de Socrate (Phédon) [16:00]
Hugues Cuénod (tenor); Geoffrey Parsons (piano)
rec. 1977 or prior. Published in 1985
French texts and English translations enclosed
NIMBUS NI 5027 [68:40]

Experience Classicsonline


 
In June 1988 I was lucky to attend a song recital at the Wigmore Hall with the legendary Swiss tenor Hugues Cuénod. The recital was specifically announced as his 86th birthday celebration! He looked at least thirty years younger, slim and vital, and his voice was as fit as it was fifty years earlier. It was never a very sonorous voice, rather white and almost androgynous but marvellously expressive and with pinpoint enunciation. One year earlier he had made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, singing the Emperor Altoum in Turandot – the oldest debutant in the house. Sixty years before the Wigmore Hall recital he had made his first appearance on a stage, in the first jazz opera, Jonny spielt auf. A remarkable career! Even more remarkable is the fact that he is still amongst us, living in the Château de Lully in the Vaud region in Switzerland, recently turned 108! There is a photo of him on Wikipedia, taken in February this year. One can’t believe he is that old.
 
I have nowhere been ably to find recording dates but since it is an analogue recording one can suspect that it was set down some time before the publishing and copyright year 1985. Cuénod’s voice is however exactly as I remember it from the Wigmore Hall recital. Besides the opportunity to hear him at whatever age, the programme is also very interesting. Apart from the Poulenc and Satie songs the rest is un-hackneyed repertoire but should definitely be heard more often. They are mostly light-hearted and humorous, often rhythmically enticing and many of them should be attractive encores after a serious song recital.
 
Jacques de Menasce isn’t a household name today but the two songs performed here give an indication that his oeuvre could be worth seeking out. They were first performed in 1954 by Cuénod and are settings of ‘thank-you’ letters that he received from the children of his friend and composer colleague Daniel Lesur. There is Poulencian esprit about them. Chabrier regarded the four songs sung here as his ‘Barnyard Suite’. They are utterly amusing portraits of animals in the countryside and were written while the composer was living in the country and thus was familiar with the special atmosphere there. Melodically appealing they have something in common with Chabrier’s piano compositions, which are also too rarely heard. In the last of the songs, ‘Ballad of the Fat Turkey-Cocks’ he even quotes Don Giovanni’s serenade from Mozart’s opera in the ritornellos. Honegger, with whom Cuénod cooperated, is basically known for rather stern music but in this song-cycle about Saluste du Bartas, he is in his sunniest mood. The songs are short and Cuénod sing them with obvious relish. Also Roussel lets his hair down in the song from his op. 20. He wrote quite a few songs and there exist recordings with singers like Mady Mesplé, Gérard Souzay, Elly Ameling and others, including Claire Croiza, who recorded several of them in 1928 with the composer at the piano.
 
The two Poulenc songs are in a more serious vein. ‘C’ is Louis Aragon’s reminiscences of May 1940 when so many French people fled before the German invasion. It is one of the most beautiful French songs and Cuénod sings it with great warmth. A sa guitarre was written for Yvonne Printemps to be sung – accompanied by a harp - in a play by Edouard Bourdet. Cuénod sings with an exquisite legato.
 
The rest of the disc belongs to Erik Satie and here Cuénod is superb, whether in the cabaret style in which Satie often excels, or in the witty miniatures in Ludions. The major piece, with a total playing time of almost half an hour, is the Drame Symphonique - Socrate. As the liner-notes point out it is neither symphonic nor very dramatic but it has a special fascination even so. It was written for four solo sopranos and a chamber orchestra but at the first performances it was sung by a solo voice, often a soprano but at least once by a tenor with Satie at the piano. In other words this way of performing it was authorized by the composer. I can’t say honestly that I like it very much but it grows on you. I have owned this disc for more than twenty years and returned to it from time to time but often stopped listening before Socrate. Now for the review I forced myself to play it straight through and realized that without being a masterwork it is very special.
 
Geoffrey Parsons makes the most of the accompaniments and the Nimbus recording is worthy of the occasion. It is hard to imagine more idiomatic singing of these songs.
 
Göran Forsling
 
 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.