Swans
Mats Lidström (cello)
Leif Kaner-Lidström (piano)
rec. 2022 Recital Hall, Trinity School, Croydon, UK
HYPERION RECORDS CDA68475 [72]
With perhaps the most famous Swan as a starting point this recital explores evocations of swans across a period of nearly half a millenium. This father/son collaboration, originally planned for the centenary of Saint-Saëns’ death in 1921 was, like many projects, derailed by COVID. Now it is here in all its feathered finery, a collection of four original works, nineteen transcriptions and one transcription of a transcription.
The most famous swan is of course from The Carnival of the Animals, surely one of Saint-Saëns’ most enduringly popular works. It was only ever intended for small private gatherings as the composer was concerned that such a frivolous piece might harm him as a serious artist. Considering how successful it has been from its very first public performance he needn’t have worried but he was evidently proud enough of the thirteenth movement, the swan, to allow its publication in a version for cello and piano…and the rest, as they say, is history. The Polish virtuoso Leopold Godowsky made a highly decorated transcription of the piece for piano solo in 1927 and in 1928 he dedicated a version to his friend, the concert pianist Isidore Achron, which was freely transcribed for violin and piano. Now twice transcribed it only remained for Lidström to play the violin part down an octave for this lovely performance. Lidström’s objective with this album was to see what was beyond Saint-Saëns: his search has been fruitful and it begins in the 16th century with Dutch composer Jacques Arcadelt’s madrigal the white and gentle swan that may speak of death through unrequited love but whose music is chaste and elegant, ably transcribed here to mimic the sound of the Viola da gamba an instrument closer to Arcadelt’s time. Another madrigal, Gibbon’s five-voiced The silver swan describes the legend of the swan-song, that final beautiful song uttered after a lifetime of silence. Ornitholgical accuracy aside the legend’s poetic power is captivating and has been taken up by several other composers here; Fanny Mendelssohn is one whose song ends with the words the star has guttered and gone out, the song of the swan has faded away. Schubert’s Schwanengesang is not from his later collection of songs by that name but rather an earlier song D.744 with lyrics by Johann Senn -who had the wonderful pseudonym Bombastus Bebederwa – describing the swan’s final song as thoughts on what death at the end means; Fearful of annihilation, Ecstatic with transfiguration until life fled. American composer Charles Albert Stebbins is possibly not on many people’s radar. He was a student of Gaston Dethier, a Guilmant pupil, and went on to become a professional organist, holding positions in Ohio and Chicago. His Swan was written for the organ and the score is preceded by Tennyson’s the Swan. This rather elegiac piece ends peacefully eschewing the tumult of Tennyson’s final verse but anon her awful jubilant voice with a music strange and manifold, Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold as when a mighty people rejoice – no real word painting here but beautiful nonetheless and Lidstöm’s transcription is very effective. Eleanor Farjeon has some familiarity as the author of morning has broken but her brother Harry, composer and teacher at the Royal Academy of Music for over 45 years is little known. He composed many songs and short piano works amongst which we find the quite sentimental piano solo Schwanengesang which I’ve enjoyed playing now and then – I have to say it sounds even better as a cello piece. His output deserves exploring. Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s the dying swan is even more sentimental and has contrasting major and minor melodies. He wrote a more flamboyant version of this but Lindstöm opts for Gottschalk’s more restained version though he does include one of Gottschalk’s ossia passages, marked scintillante, a favourite of Gottschalk’s. Two final swan songs (is that tautology?) are by Grieg and Homero de Sá Barreto. The latter was a Brazilian pianist and composer who apparently wrote several cello works that seem to have piqued Lidstöm’s interest but it is one of his songs that we hear, a setting of poetry by Júlio Salusse, may the living swan, full of longing never sing again, nor swim alone, nor ever swim alongside another swan. This allusion to love, death and despair is echoed in Grieg’s passionate and familiar swan song setting of Ibsen’s En Svane and can be found in other pieces here such as Raynaldo Hahn’s les cygnes with its gentle undulating accompaniment and gorgeous melody or Svanen by Fredrik August Ehrström, described as the first Finnish composer. His song is rather like Haydn or early Beethoven to which Lindström has added a varied second verse in sympathetic style. His swan sings of the beauty of the North in J.L. Runeberg’s poem which was also used by clarinettist and composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell. Lindström has expanded with Crusell’s rather short setting with cadenza-like passages based on music from his clarinet concertos, the music which brought Crusell into the public arena. Fauré’s swan is harmonious and wise, its author, Renée de Brimont, cautioning about exploring darker, troubled waters and to dwell instead on lakes where mirrored faithfully are these clouds, these flowers, these stars, and these eyes. The spirit of freedom and exploration is also found in Hélène Tham’s setting, her swan gliding slowly but eager to lift his wings to flight. Lidström made a conscious effort to include female composers and eventually came across Tham, a Swedish composer and god-daughter of singer Jenny Lind. Her many songs and piano pieces appear to have been destined for private use though she was well-known in musical circles and taught piano to a future piano professor at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Music, Victor Wiklund, older brother of composer Adolf Wiklund. We stay in Scandanavia for Finnish composer Selim Palmgren’s graceful and vaguely impressionist Swan. This is from his Lyric Pieces op.28 which are just a small part of a huge piano output. The song of the black swan by Villa-Lobos is the final section of a symphonic poem entitled the Naufrágio de Kleônicos, the shipwreck of Kleonics in which the swan’s flight brings the turbulent storms that wreck the ship. The swan returns and lands on the wreckage whereupon a desperate sailor, clinging to the detritus fights and drowns the bird whose mournful swan song is heard in this solo, extracted as a cello solo by Villa-Lobos the year after the orchestral poem was written. Less violent are depictions of swans gliding like a white sledge across the lake as in the extract from Ravel’s song cycle Histoires Naturelles though even here the swan has thoughts of death.
Didier-Gaston de l’Aubergine was born in Rennes and evidently was content to remain there, having taken over his father’s position as organist at the church of Saint-Melaine. His swan looking at his reflection in the water was originally written for viola and though it opens in a fairly cygnine manner, rippling piano accompaniment and slow cello melody, the bulk of the piece is quite playful and vivacious suggesting our swan imagines something of the adventurer when it sees its reflection. Szymanowski’s song Łabędź introduces a new vision, swan as guide to the underworld, to unsatisfiable desire, hopelessness and inability. It is a brooding barcarolle suggesting this swan inhabits the River Styx, the melody and mood throughout dark and intense. The performers here both provide a swan; Lidström snr follows immediately after Saint-Saëns and it clearly bases itself on the latter with a very similar accompaniment and melodic style though, for all its major key ending it has more drama within its short span. Lidström jnr also takes Saint-Saëns as inspiration, inverting the melody and creating a thoughtful discourse between piano and cello; the harmonic language in both pieces is tonal while managing to sound contemporary.
They end with an excerpt from what must be the second most famous swan, Tschaikowsky’s Swan Lake. Lidström plays the cello solo, the fourth number in the suite from the ballet adding subtle cadenza passages to make it a work in its own right without the violin’s interlude. Lidström snr and jnr make a very strong impression in this, their first collaboration on disc, an excellently recorded, performed and curated recital.
Rob Challinor
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Contents
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
The Swan, No.13 of the Carnival of the Animals (1886)
Mats Lidström (b.1959)
The Swan (2011)
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) arr. Mats Lidström
Łabędź Op.7 (1904)
Camille Saint-Saëns arr. Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938)
The Swan No.13 of the Carnival of the Animals (arr.1927)
Leif Kaner-Lidström (b.1995)
The Swan (2022)
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) arr. Mats Lidström
Schwanenlied No.1 of 6 Lieder Op.1 (1835-38)
Jacques Arcadelt (1505?-1568) arr. Mats Lidström
Il bianco e dolce cigno (pub.1539)
Hélène Tham (1843-1925) arr. Mats Lidström
Svanen No.2 of 9 Songs (pub.1894)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) arr. Mats Lidström
The Silver Swan (pub.1612)
Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) arr. Mats Lidström
les Cygnes (1893-94)
Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775-1838) arr. Mats Lidström
Svanen (pub.1838)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) arr. Mats Lidström
Le Cygne No.3 of Histoires naturelles (1906)
Fredrik August Ehrström (1801-1850) arr. Mats Lidström
Svanen (c.1833)
Harry Farjeon (1878-1948) arr. Mats Lidström
Ein Schwanengesang (pub.1905)
Selim Palmgren (1878-1951) arr. Mats Lidström
Svanen No.5 of 6 Lyric pieces Op.28 (1909)
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
O canto do cisne negro W.122 (1917)
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) arr. Mats Lidström
Cygne sur l’eau No.1 of Mirages Op.113 (1919)
Charles Albert Stebbins (1874-1958) arr. Mats Lidström
The Swan (1912?)
Homero de Sá Barreto (1884-1924) arr. Mats Lidström
O cysne
Didier-Gaston de l’Aubergine (1887-1938) arr. Mats Lidström
Le cygne regarde son reflet dans l’eau (1922)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1926) arr. Mats Lidström
The dying swan Romance poétique R.076 Op.100 (1869?)
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) arr. Mats Lidström
En svane No.2 of six poems by Henrik Ibsen Op.25 (pub.1876)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) arr. Mats Lidström
Schwanengesang D.744 (1822)
Pyotr Tchaikowsky (1840-1893) arr. Mats Lidström
Pas d’action No.4 of Swan lake Suite Op.20a (1875-76)
