Donna Voce Volume 2
Women of Legend
Contents listed after review
Anna Shelest (piano)
rec. 2023, Patrych Sound Studios, New York
Music & Arts MA-CD1309 [76]
This is a follow up to Shelest’s 2019 disc Donna Voce for Sorel Classics SCCD015 which featured the music of Amy Beach, Lily Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, Chiayu Hsu and Fanny Mendelssohn. On that disc she recorded Fanny Mendelssohn’s Sonata in G minor which might be considered a larger scale work but its 16 minutes pale into comparison beside her wonderful piano cycle Das Jahr, the Year; it comprises thirteen movements, one for each month plus a chorale epilogue. There is little documentation of the work from Fanny’s lifetime; so far the only mention seems to be in a letter that she wrote to painter August Elsasser in which she modestly describes it as another small work that’s given me much fun – this for a cycle that on this disc comes in at 48 minutes. She gave it to her husband, the painter Wilhelm Hensel, as a present on Christmas Day 1841 and he provided a series of vignettes to accompany each movement. The manuscript remained unpublished until 1989 and a second version that Fanny produced, with an alternative, shorter June, longer August and revised December, was finally published with Hensel’s vignettes in 2000. The excellent booklet includes four of those delicate vignettes alongside contemporary portraits of Fanny and Mel Bonis. Each of the movements is accompanied by short lines from poetry; Ludwig Uhland, Johann Wilhelm von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Joseph von Eichendorff and Ludwig Tieck Trauer are represented and once again the booklet supplies these to give a sense of the mood of each movement. The writing is prodigious, very like her brother’s though he never attempted anything on this scale for the instrument. It is so well crafted and idiomatic that it can stand head held high alongside other more familiar works of the period and would make an excellent recital work; I do not know how often it is programmed live though there are now eight complete recordings that I am aware of, all by female pianists I see; one at least, Christina Bjørkøe on Danacord (DACOCD957 review) plays the earlier version but includes the alternative, longer August; Shelest plays the shorter but still substantial version. The music shares much of the same material, it is just more developed in the second version.
January is seen as if a fantasy looking forward to spring; among its improvisatory writing is a reference to the spring song that is May. The presto that leads to February could easily have come from one of her brother’s concertos. February itself is a dazzling scherzo; dances of devils, fools and the dead is part of Goethe’s lines that head the movement. Shelest is the fastest of any recording but her fleet fingerwork is impeccable and no details are sacrificed. March, an agitated song without words, soon gives way to the Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden which Hensel takes through a couple of grandiose transformations including the original music over the chorale melody in the bass – glorious stuff. April contrasts two differing moods, lilting barcarolle and sudden virtuosic passages, two opposites that mirror the inspiration the sight of the sun deceives with gentle false light – Goethe once again. May’s spring song clearly shows Hensel’s melodic, developmental and pianistic gifts. June’s wistfulness only emphasises this and her decorative variation in this lovely serenade shows that she was well aware of advances in piano technique; the three handed effect, where a melody is given predominantly to the two thumbs while the fingers of both hands provide accompaniment and decoration, first came to prominence in the fantasies of Sigismond Thalberg, notably his Moses fantasie of 1835, just six years before Hensel wrote this beautiful movement. July is another serenade, modest enough that the reserved drama in its short span could almost go unnoticed but a closer look reveals a wealth of superbly crafted writing, skilful use of tremolando and wonderful creation of timbre across the keyboard. August is another scherzo like work, bright with colour on the sheaves lies the wreathes are Schiller’s words here. The opening march has hints of Robert Schumann but the 6/8 section, wreathed in arpeggios is all Mendelssohn. How September, subtitled am Flusse,at the river, is not in the repertoire of hosts of pianists is a mystery that one can only be put down to lack of awareness and the work’s relatively recent emergence from the mists of time. Its flowing accompaniment susurrates around a melancholy melody that would do any composer proud. Hensel utterly captures the spirit of Goethe’s lines Flow, flow dear river, never will I be happy. October springs onto the scene in complete contrast, a brazen hunting chorus that hints at Schumann and even Liszt in its virtuosity while copying neither. I haven’t checked but it almost seems that Hensel navigates her way through every key in this fantasy on the popular genre; a very grand October hunt. Anyone looking for an alternative to Mendelssohn’s Andante and rondo capriccioso would do well to investigate November. Its dramatic adagio opening, marked mesto, sad, has a solemn hymn-like feel to it and it gives way to an allegro molto agitato that has the same dramatic mood but now unrestrained, turbulent and wildly virtuosic. December continues in similar style, its étude-likefiguration showing that Hensel was well acquainted with Chopin’s études or at least op.10 no.4 and op.25 no.6. As with March its opening mood gives way to a hymn tune, celebrating the time of year, in this case hymn 85 from the Lutheran Hymnal; Von Himmel hoch, da komm ich her, from heaven on high, I come here. The hymn is varied as the piece progresses and after the first variation Hensel provides a very short calm coda; Shelest chooses to finish with an alternative second variation that Hensel offers with thundering octaves in the left hand and a strong ending. The real ending to the entire set is a Postlude that pays homage to Bach with a deeply moving setting of das alte Jahr vergangen ist. The cycle displays astonishing maturity, imagination and idiomatic writing for the instrument that might offer the occasional nod to the music of her brother and other contemporaries but is nonetheless very personal. It deserves a bigger audience.
As does the music of Mel Bonis. Mélanie Bonis studied under Cesar Franck and shared a classroom with Debussy and Pierné. Her parents had never intended a musical career for her but her own drive and undoubted talent impressed a family friend who taught at the conservatoire;he suggested that she ought to have musical guidance. To those of a more reserved, perhaps prosaic, nature unfamiliar with the artistic world the life of musicians and other artists has always been perceived as more bohemian and reckless than it often is and so Bonis’ passion for a fellow student Amédée Landély Hettich was sufficient for her parents to remove her from the conservatoire and his dangerous influence. She was married off to a widower a quarter of a century her senior and her life became filled with children and domesticity…and, despite her husband’s dislike for the art form, music. She continued to compose and achieved success despite these obstacles with musicians of the stature of Gabriel Pierné, Ricardo Viñes and Francis Planté performing her works. She had reconnected with her former lover Hettich; he put her in touch with the publisher Léduc who published her works which amounted to 189 opus numbers. She died in 1937 just one month before Hettich.
Her Femmes de Légende were not written as a cycle nor did Bonis give them that collective title though it is how they are commonly known nowadays and it is certainly apt. They were composed and published at different times; Mélisande was written just 5 years after Maeterlinck’s poem of the name and predates Debussy’s opera though admittedly its small scale concentrates on the poem’s passage describing her hair. The flowing arpeggios and soaring melody immediately bring Fauré to mind though earlier romantic writing and hints of Debussy, reflets dans l’eau in particular, can be heard. Desdémona has elements of a baroque minuet combined with delicate bucolic writing accompanying a sweet wistful serenade, the song inspired by Maurice Bouchor’s songs of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Ophélie next with a passionate nocturne that once more hints at Debussy. The history of the lady of the lake, Viviane here but also Morgana, Nimue and many others, is a story older than the 12th and 13th century French poems that inspired mythologies aplenty, Arthurian legends amongst them. I like the idea of a mythical creature, fairy in part or entirety, and the impish writing reflects both the movement of water and the mercurial magic of its subject. The gentle rippling nocturne that depicts Phœbé, titan daughter of Uranus and Gaia, sky and earth, grandmother of Apollo and Artemis and the original guardian of the oracle is a lovely homage to her links to the worship of the moon. Salomé is shown in a dance that vacillates between elegant steps and wild and wilful virtuosity crossing time signatures, all bound by a chordal passage that sings over an ostinato bass in ten beats (alternating bars of 3-4 and 2-4). It is the mostly overtly virtuosic of the seven pieces though the complexity of Omphale comes close to matching it. The legend of Hercules condemned to serve as a slave to Omphale, the queen of Lydia, holding the wool as she spins was depicted in Saint-Saëns’ symphonic poem Le rouet d’Omphale thirty years prior to Bonis’ portrait. Her intricate spinning song weaves its way through various time signatures and her figuration for the spinning varies throughout with two melodic motifs, a descending chromatic theme and a more ethereal and diffuse rising song, creating a sort of dialogue. It ends tranquilly as the wheel gradually slows to a halt; a perfect little tone poem in its own right.
The final work brings us into the twentieth century with Nocturne 1 by Ukrainian composer Olena Ilnytska. The composer portrays the night as its characteristic sounds; the hustle and bustle of the day subsides, the quietest and most inconspicuous sounds of nature (churning, chirping, buzzing) appear more intense. She brings in all sorts of timbres to evoke these sounds not limited to the regular sounds of the instrument such as trills and tremolos, dazzling arpeggio figure and runs but also percussive note clusters, plucked strings and playing on the wood of the instrument. Its soundscape is highly effective, at one point reminding me of Ligeti but moving on to the next mix of timbres almost immediately.
Anna Shelest is my kind of pianist, electric in her passion and sweep, caution pushed aside but with the strength of technique that that mindset requires, all coupled with a delicacy of touch and singing tone that is perfect, especially in the melodious, introvert side of Fanny Hensel’s music. I heard the complete Femmes de Légende played in recital earlier this year by the wonderful Elena Fischer-Dieskau and was delighted when this opportunity to hear them on disc came along so soon afterwards. After the riches of this recital I eagerly await Donna Voce III with the music of Cécile Chaminade and Clara Schumann.
Rob Challinor
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Contents:
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
Das Jahr (1841)
Mel Bonis (1858-1937)
Femmes de Légende
Mélisande, Op 109 (1898)
Desdémona, Op 101 (pub.1913)
Ophélie, Op 165 (pub.1909)
Viviane, Op 80 (pub.1909)
Phœbé, Op 30 (pub.1909)
Salomé, Op 100 (pub.1909)
Omphale, Op 86 (pub.1910)
Olena Ilnytska (b. 1977)
Nocturne 1 (2019)
