Visions Illuminées
Mary Bevan (soprano)
Joseph Middleton (piano)
12 Ensemble
Ruisi Quartet
rec. 2022, All Hallows’ Church, Gospel Oak, London
Sung texts with English translations enclosed.
Reviewed as download from press preview
Signum Classics SIGCD735 [75]
Mary Bevan has for several years stood out as one of the foremost interpreters of art songs. I have hailed her recordings of Wolf, Sullivan and, most recently, Barber. For some reasons I missed her two previous solo recitals: Voyage and The Divine Muse, both on Signum, as is her latest album Visions Illuminées, reviewed here. It is an all-French programme, even though Benjamin Britten is British, but Les Illuminations is a setting of French texts. It is also the most prestigious work on this disc and has been recorded frequently since the early 1950s. Presto Classical lists 59 recording, so competition is keen. Britten composed it in 1939-40 to prose poems by Rimbaud while he was staying in the US, and premiered by the Swiss soprano Sophie Wüss in London in 1940; the composer was not able to attend due to his voluntary exile. French-speaking sopranos Janine Micheau and Suzanne Danco were early advocates through recordings, as was Peter Pears, who for many years was intimately associated with the work and in the 1960s rerecorded it in stereo with the composer conducting. The recordings available today are fairly equally divided between sopranos and tenors, and most of those I have heard are at a high level of excellence. The present one with Mary Bevan and 12 Ensemble is definitely a strong contender. The 12 Ensemble – a new acquaintance for me – deliver springy and elegant playing, transparent textures, seemingly ideal for what Helen Abbott calls “Britten’s … appearance of an emotional nonchalance” in her liner notes. Corresponding to this lightness is Mary Bevan’s sensitive handling of the solo part: lyrically beautiful, often etherical and weightless – listen to the marvellous singing in Phrase (tr. 4) and Antique (tr. 5) – but always expressive. Generally speaking, I prefer to hear a soprano in the solo part, possibly because I first came to know this work through a Caprice recording with the eminent Swedish soprano Margareta Hallin back in the 1970s. It is not in Caprice’s recent catalogue and I’m not sure it ever was transferred to CD in the first place. But readers who remember Ms Hallin need not despair. Mary Bevan’s reading is a worthy substitute.
Les Illuminations is surrounded by French songs rooted in the late 19th century but with a modern twist in a couple of instances. Maurice Ravel’s “Un grand sommeil noir” is a compilation of three songs composed around the turn of the previous century and has been tied together with orchestral interludes composed by Robin Holloway (b. 1943), who has employed the same instruments as Ravel did in his Mallarmé songs from 1913, with the addition of double bass and harp. The result is an intriguing mini-cycle that stylistically belongs much closer to our own time than when the songs originally were conceived. They also give Mary Bevan opportunities to show her lower register, which is surprisingly full-toned. Robin Holloway also has a finger in the pie in the Debussy suite “Quatre Mélodies de Verlaine”, where he also joins the four individual songs to a unit through instrumental bridges. This time the instruments are limited to a piano quintet, which is more in line with the character of the songs. Mary Bevan is at her most charming in the well-known “Mandoline” which she sings with mercurial lightness and a humorous glint in the eye.
Besides these three groups of songs, there is a quartet of isolated songs, all of them great favourites of mine, though here heard in rarely performed versions with instrumental groups instead of the traditional piano accompaniments. Fauré’s “Clair de Lune” from 1887 was orchestrated the following year at the request of the Princesse de Polignac and is a lovely opening to the whole programme. Duparc composed “Chanson triste” in 1868-69 when he was in his early twenties, and more than forty years later he orchestrated it. By then he had been retired for more than twenty years due to mental illness and the beginning of a loss of vision. It is a wonderful arrangement of a wonderful song, and so is Chabrier’s “Tes yeux bleus” was orchestrated by the composer himself in 1883, probably as an homage to Wagner, who had died that year. The arrangement was, however, never issued but rested untouched in the archive of the publisher for more than one hundred years, and this is the first recording of it. Chausson’s “Chanson perpétuelle” is another work over which Wagner also hovers as godfather. It belongs to his last completed works – he died shortly after in a bicycle accident. I need hardly add that Mary Bevan sings all four to the manner born.
There is, however, a substantial bonus that concludes this disc which made my mouth water. I have long had special liking for a couple of lush, romantic orchestral pieces by Augusta Holmés. Here now are five of her serenades which she herself arranged for voice and piano quintet. The first four constitute a vocal version of “The Four Seasons” with a fifth added for the whole year “Sérénade de toujours”. They are quite simple, a kind of parlour song, but lovely – I admit to having a sweet tooth – and touching, and Mary Bevan sings them so simply and beautifully.
The whole disc is in fact lovely and, apart from the Holmés songs, Chabrier’s “Tes yeux bleus” and Robin Holloway’s version of Debussy’s Verlaine songs, they are also world premieres – the latter written in 2022. The playing of Joseph Middleton, 12 Ensemble and Ruisi Quartet is sparkling, the recording is excellent and Mary Bevan spreads her golden tones over the whole programme.
Göran Forsling
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Contents
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Clair de Lune, Op. 46 No. 2
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Les Illuminations, Op. 18
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Un grand sommeil noir (arr. Robin Holloway)
Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
Chanson triste
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
Tes yeux bleus * (String orchestra arrangement by the composer)
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Quatre Mélodies de Verlaine * (arr. Robin Holloway)
Augusta Holmés (1847-1903)
Sérénades * (Piano Quintet arrangement by the composer)
* World Premiere Recording
