Zwischen Himmel und Erde
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Chants de terre et de ciel (1938)
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Vier Lieder op. 12 (1915/1917)
Graciane Finzi (b. 1945)
La lune à la fenêtre (1999)
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Acht Gedichte aus ‘Letzte Blätter’ op. 10 (1885)
Monika Abel (soprano)
Kathrin Isabelle Klein (piano)
rec. 2024
Hänssler Classic HC23075 [64]

Monika Abel and Kathrin Isabelle Klein begin their stimulating new recital with Olivier Messiaen’s Chants de terre et de ciel. Like Poèmes pour Mi, Chants de terre et de ciel was written for the dramatic soprano, Marcelle Bunlet and is a direct successor to the earlier cycle written in a similar spirit of intimacy and open heartedness, again setting the composer’s own words. Whereas Poèmes pour Mi is a celebration of his joy within the mutual commitment of his marriage to his first wife Claire Delbos, Chants de terre et de ciel is a touching and at times ecstatic celebration of family life and fatherhood, where Messiaen once more uses family names in what feels like an attempt to bring us closer to the domestic happiness he was experiencing at the time. If this all sounds a little bit sentimental and if Messiaen’s texts themselves also appear to exude a sort of laboured saccharinity, then the music will bring any listener up with a start, especially in such a charged performance as this.

Monika Abel has the perfect voice for the demands Messiaen makes in this piece: it has warmth and tenderness but also when required a steely edge. Abel demonstrates all these qualities in the first song in the cycle, Bail avec Mi, in which the composer absolutely throws the singer in at the deep end. Abel has to simultaneously create an essentially contemplative air, whilst having to pinpoint a set of demanding pitches, where Messiaen invariably wants the highest notes sung with clarity, accuracy and with sudden pianissimos. She does this wonderfully well, so that one is only aware of the effect created, not effort expended. This is also true of the demanding melismatic writing in the second song. Antienne du silence where she also negotiates skilfully the descending passages at the end of the song in a beautifully transparent way when it would be so easy to spread tone and sound cloudy. Whilst Danse du bébé-Pilule (‘bébé-Pilule’ being the family’s nickname for Messiaen’s then infant son Pascal) is more straightforward technically, Abel is appropriately ebullient, creating a real sense of wonder and she maintains that sense into Arc-en-ciel d’innocence which is Messiaen’s portrayal of his joy contemplating his sleeping son. There couldn’t be a greater contrast than with the next song Minuit pile et force, which is essentially a dramatic scena where a succession of chilling images of death and havoc are contrasted with the innocence of the sleeping child. Abel is vividly theatrical here, her projection of Messiaen’s text almost rhetorical at times and she judges the final, spoken phrase perfectly. It needs to sound almost casual and yet it has to return us to the world of domestic bliss, and does so here. The final song, Résurrection lands the singer with the composer’s most effortful text, a sort of succession of quasi-mystical, theologically charged images of the risen Jesus. Abel sings this fearlessly and joyfully,  a joy evoked so much more successfully in the music rather than the words, and gives an absolutely virtuoso display.

Throughout all of the songs, Kathrin Isabelle Klein’s piano playing is absolutely superb. Compared with Poèmes pour Mi, the piano writing in Chants de terre et de ciel is much more demanding and there is so much the pianist has to get absolutely right, almost without drawing the listener’s attention, from the really, really fast figures written in the highest reaches of the piano to judging the resonance which is so vital to this piece. Klein gauges so well every time Messiaen’s demands for resonance, playing chords to set off vibrations which seem to hang in the air for just the right amount of time. You can hear this perfectly in ‘Arc-en-ciel d’innocence’ where what Messiaen called the ‘chord of resonance’ is deployed by Klein to miraculous effect. I enjoyed this performance just as much as the excellent account by Barbara Hannigan and Bertrand Chamayou (Alpha 1033) reviewed here by Stephen Barber (review) where Hannigan is even more dramatic, a little less rapt than Abel. It’s very pleasing to have two such excellent recent accounts in the catalogue.

Anton Webern’s Vier Lieder written in 1915 and 1917 are a marked contrast to the Messiaen, musically in their much sparer textures and bare lines, poetically in their varied texts. This is not twelve-tone music, although the short prelude to the last song, Gleich und gleich, consisting of twelve different notes, seems to anticipate it, Webern saying later, ‘We were not yet aware of the [twelve-tone] law at the time, but it had long been felt.’ Abel and Klein inhabit this liminal world effortlessly, from the brittle, crystalline quality they give to the opening song Der Tag ist vergangen (a folk song setting) to the slightly more colourfully scored second song Die geheimnisvolle Flöte. This is a setting from the same collection by the Chinese poet Li Bai that Mahler used for Das Lied von der Erde but sounds if not a world apart from Mahler, then a quite different approach to achieving similar exotic ends. Klein somehow seems to conjure more strangeness and beauty from the piano part here than the notes on the page would suggest. In Schien mir’s, als ich sah die Sonne, Webern sets a dismal (in every sense of the word) text taken from Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata and does so with great skill. Abel sings the somewhat bizarre text as if she believes in its coherence and the effect is striking: you are given the impression of a sort of nonsensical moral fable which leaves you thinking you only have to listen one more time for enlightenment – it’s very skilful singing. Gleich und Gleich is a setting of Goethe, whose simple poem here is rendered in a declamatory Second Viennese School style, which when performed with the sympathy of Abel and Klein has a slightly astringent somewhat jewel like quality.

The first recording of Graciane Finzi’s cycle La lune à la fenêtre follows. These are six miniatures, mostly of Japanese haikus, sometimes combined in a single song. In the first, Libellule rouge for example, she skilfully sets Takarai Kikaku’s cruel haiku about a dragonfly with Matsuo Bashō’s haiku in response so the effect is palindromic. The cycle as a whole is artfully constructed so we move from small creatures to larger concerns, and the last song L’averse du soir draws a parallel with lights being put out at night with the ephemerality of human life. The music fits Finzi’s thoughtful selections perfectly. Hearing the Webern before it, one perceives Finzi’s settings as a sort of twenty first century upgrade: again, less is more here in textural terms and a mood will change in the blink of an eye, but there is also much more colour and the flashes of gorgeousness in the vocal line are an inspired touch. Finzi, a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, worked with singers for much of her time there and it shows. Abel’s singing is mesmerising and the first time I listened I couldn’t believe the cycle seemed to have passed in a heartbeat. I wanted more, so ended up listening to it almost on repeat for a few days.

The Acht Gedichte aus ‘Letzte Blätter’ of Richard Strauss might at first seem an oddly conventional way to end what has been an adventurous recital but there’s a pleasing appropriateness in following the Finzi with another composer’s take on nature and man’s relationship with it and musically it works beautifully. Mathematically puzzling though if one looks at the track listing, as there are nine songs. The Acht Gedichte was the first song cycle Strauss composed using poems of Hermann Gilm. In its centre in the first printed version and all subsequent editions until recently were the settings of Die Georgine (‘The Dahlia’) and Geduld (‘Patience’) which epitomise the spirit of Gilm’s collection: nature, love and human life. However when Strauss conceived the cycle there was another song placed sixth in the cycle, Wer hat’s gethan? (‘Who did it?’). It’s an interesting reflection on the permanence of art, and song in particular, compared with the transience of flowers killed by a night frost. When the cycle came to be published, the song was removed. One can speculate why – was it the inference of a deity which added a different dimension to the cycle that Strauss didn’t ultimately care for? Was it that a ninth song, particularly one with a long, albeit rather beautiful piano epilogue somehow upset the balance and symmetry of the whole? Anyway it wasn’t until the new G. Henle Verlag edition in 2022 that Wer hat’s gethan? was published with the other eight songs (in an Appendix). Abel and Klein have restored its position on this recording and there’s no doubt the cycle gains from it, especially sung as beautifully as this. Indeed, the whole is delivered in a poised, sometimes suspended, occasionally rapturous, deeply musical manner which characterises the best recordings of early Strauss lieder. Abel’s poignant rendition of the final song, Allerseelen, is exquisite and a flawless way to finish a recital that has taken us on an exciting and illuminating journey in its hour’s span.

The disc has been very well recorded by Hänssler, with just enough spaciousness to do justice to the performers. The lack of the texts and translations though makes no sense. It’s inconceivable with a recital of this sort than any informed listener will want to simply let the words and music wash over them. Kathrin Isabelle Klein’s booklet notes are excellent and do give some help but really can’t make up for the glaring absence of an essential component of the experience.

Dominic Hartley

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