Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) - Le Rossignol Eperdu

Label: Ivory Classics, CD-72006(2CDs)
UPC: 644057200626
ASIN: B00005S6VR
CD Release: November 20, 2001
Recording Type: DDD, Stereo, Studio
Recording Date: April 30th - May 5th, 2001
Venue: Fernleaf Abbey, Columbus, Ohio
Running Time: 2 12' 41''



French composer Reynaldo Hahn wrote very few solo piano compositions. This world première two disc recording performed here by the GRAMMY®Award - winning pianist Earl Wild, includes the very rare collection of 53 solo piano compositions entitled, Le Rossignol Éperdu(The Bewildered Nightingale). Recorded here in its entirety for the first time, these fifty-three delightful poèmes for piano were composed between 1899 and 1911. Each of these little gems are inspired by great poets such as; Verlaine, Molière, Baudelaire and Hugo among others. The Le Rossignol Éperduconsists of four suites; I. Premiere, II. Orient, III. Carnet de Voyage and IV. Versailles. This extraordinary group of miniatures reflects varying impressions, sketches and thoughts during Reynaldo Hahn's countless travels. This music is played with passionate Belle Époque elegance by the Romantic Master himself, Earl Wild. Liner notes are both in English and French. Earl Wild, at the age of 86, attacks the often-challenging writing with the vigour of a 20-year-old. In his note in the booklet, Wild singles out the penultimate 'Hivernale' with its 'rhythmic combination of 7/4 plus 4/4, which becomes 11 quarter notes to measure'. The only previous recording of any of Le rossignol eperdu was by Catherine Joly. She took a more Romantic approach, where Wild's playing, with its superb clarity and precision, seems much more Classical. This is one of the most important Hahn recordings ever made, clearly a must for any devotee, but even the uninitiated might be taken by surprise.





      01. Frontispice (Frontispiece)
      02. Andromède résignée (Andromeda resigned to her fate)
      03. Douloureuse Rêverie dans un bois de sapins (pained musings in a pine wood)
      04. Le Bouquet de Pensées (cluster of thoughts)
      05. Soleil d’automne (Autumn Sun)
      06. Gretchen
      07. Les Deux Écharpes (the two scarves)
      08. Liebe! Liebe! (love! love!)
      09. Eros caché dans les bois (Eros hidden in the woods)
      10. La Fausse Indifférence (feigned indifference)
      11. Chanson de Midi (Song of midday)
      12. Antiochus
      13. Never more
      14. Portrait
      15. L’Enfant au Perroquet (The child with a parrot)
      16. Les Réveries du Prince Églantine (The musings of Prince Eglantine)
      17. Ivresse (Intoxication)
      18. L’Arome suprême (sublime aroma)
      19. Berceuse féroce (impatient cradle song)
      20. Passante (Passer-by)
      21. La Danse de l’Amour et de l’Ennui (Dance of love and boredom)
      22. Ouranos (Uranus)
      23. Les Héliotropes du Clos-André
      24. Effet de nuit sur la Seine (Night impressions on the Seine)
      25. Per i piccoli canali (along the little canals)
      26. Mirage
      27. La Danse de l’Amour et du Danger (the dance of love and danger)
      28. Matinée parisienne (Morning in Paris)
      29. Chérubin tragique (Tragic Cherub)
      30. Les Chênes enlacés (the entwined oaks)



      01. En Caïque (in a caïque/longboat)
      02. Narghilé (The Hookah, waterpipe)
      03. Les Chiens de Galata (the dogs of Galata)
      04. Rêverie nocturne sur le Bosphore (Nocturnal musings on the Bosphorus)
      05. La Rose de Blida (the rose at Blida)
      06. L’Oasis (the oasis)
      07. L’Ange Verrier (the Glass Angel)
      08. Le Jardin de Pétrarque (the garden of Petrarch)
      09. La Nativité (the Nativity crib in Nuremberg)
      10. Faunesse dansante (dancing faun)
      11. Les Noces du Duc de Joyeuse (The Marriage of the Duke of Joyeuse)
      12. Le Petit Mail (the little promenade)
      13. Les Pages d’Elisabeth (the pages of Elizabeth)
      14. La Jeunesse et l’Été ornent de fleurs le tombeau de Pergolèse
      15. Vieux Bahuts (Old Furniture)
      16. Hommage a Martius (Homage to Martial)
      17. La Reine au jardin (The Queen in her garden)
      18. Le Réveil de Flore (The awakening of Spring)
      19. Le Banc songeur (bench dreamer)
      20. La Fête de Terpsichore (The Feast of Terpsichore)
      21. Adieux au soir tombant (Farewell to the fading evening)
      22. Hivernale (Winter ascent)
      23. Le Pèlerinage inutile (The futile pilgrimage)





Reynaldo Hahn is often considered an archetypal French composer – a product of effective French music education coupled with the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Paris. The fact that Hahn was not actually French (he was born in Caracas, Venezuela) has never deterred this notion – even among the nationalistic French – since he made Paris his home for nearly his entire life. Today, as he was during his life, he is best known for his vocal works, ranging from serious opera and operetta to solo songs. His affinity for both the stage and the human voice eventually led to his appointment in 1945 as director of the Paris Opéra.

Hahn's parents were of German and Venezuelan extraction; when he was three years old the family relocated to Paris, where Hahn entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1886. He studied harmony with Théodore Dubois, piano with Decombes and composition with Jules Massenet. Massenet's influence is clear in one of Hahn's earliest, and most famous, songs, Si mes vers avaient des ailes (If my verses had wings); written when the composer was only 13, it is a charming setting of verses by Victor Hugo. The combined forces of Massenet's advocacy on his behalf (enough to have his cycle of songs on the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Chansons grises, published in 1893) and Hahn's own fine singing voice (enabling him to accompany himself in salons and concert halls) helped to establish his reputation in the city.

Early in his career, Hahn made the acquaintance of Sarah Bernhardt and Marcel Proust; Proust, especially, would instill in Hahn a deep appreciation and understanding of poetry, which had a profound effect on Hahn's approach to vocal composition. Hahn once wrote, "The genuine beauty of singing consists in a perfect unison, an amalgam, a mysterious alloy of the singing and the speaking voice, or to put it better, the melody and the spoken word." Hahn found himself seduced by the poetry of Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and Paul Verlaine; he put his efforts toward creating musical phrasing and rhythmic gestures that would allow the words to speak for themselves. Hahn believed that "[o]nly form can give a piece a chance of lasting…." This perhaps explains his predilection for the older, repetitive formal structures evident in some of his songs, such as "L'automne" (Autumn), "Le printemps" (Spring), and "Quand je fus pris au pavillion" (When I was Lured to her Pavilion).

Hahn's first stage composition was incidental music for Daudet's L'obstacle in 1890; his first opera to reach the stage was the three-act L'île du rêve, performed in Paris at the Opéra-Comique in 1898; a more successful serious opera appeared in 1935 (Le marchand de Venise, in three acts, with a libretto by Zamacoïs, after Shakespeare). Notably, with Le marchand de Venise, Hahn deliberately returned to the "old-fashioned" division between musical numbers and recitatives and returned the orchestra to a purely accompanimental role. Hahn's most important ballet, Le dieu bleu, was composed in 1912 for Diaghilev's company (to a scenario by Cocteau and Madrazo). By far, Hahn's most successful theater piece is his operetta Ciboulette; it premiered to instant acclaim in Paris in 1923, and has received innumerable performances since. As a conductor and impresario at the Paris Opéra, Hahn favored the operas of Mozart; he found the earlier composer so fascinating, in fact, that he composed a musical comedy on his life (Mozart, 1925), in which he included pastiches of Mozart's own music.





As Alastair Londonderry writes in the booklet accompanying this set, the title Le rossignol eperdu is 'a bit of a teaser'. Eperdu can mean distraught, bewildered, frantic or even ecstatic: 'perhaps this nightingale is all of these things'. The set, recorded here in its entirety for the first time, comprises 53 pieces, divided into four groups. Hahn worked on the sequence between 1899 and 1910, although it seems unlikely that he originally envisaged it as such a long work. Although he was only 30 in 1904, Hahn had already known an enormous amount of success, and also the disappointment of the lukewarm reception accorded to his first two operas (L'ile du reve and La Carmelite). He seems to have undergone something of an emotional crisis in 1900, and there is a sense that these very private pieces are a sort of diary. Each one carries a quotation from a poet, or a subtitle, the very first being: 'Penche un peu ton oreille a cet oiseau qui pleure: c'est moi!' ('Listen a little to this bird that weeps: it is me!'). Later there is 'Liebe!, Liebe!' with the quotation from Baudelaire, 'Toi qui, comme un coup de couteau, dans mon coeur plaintif es entree' ('You who have thrust your way into my grieving heart like a knife').

The first suite is the longest, with 30 pieces, ranging from 'Gretchen' ('Heureuse a faire mal au coeur') which culminates in a passionate, dissonant coda that is surprising from Hahn, to much more typical songs without words: 'Soleil d'automne' and 'Les reveries du Prince Eglantine' that recall his melodies. 'Per i piccoli canali' is a near-cousin of 'La barcheta' from Chants Venetiens, while 'La danse de l'amour et du danger' is a sinister-sounding waltz. By 1910 Hahn had started a new career as a composer of ballets: La fete chez Therese was a huge success at L'Opera and led to a commission from Diaghilev. This turned out to be an oriental fantasy, to a libretto by Cocteau, Le dieu bleu, and the second suite of Le rossignol is called 'Orient'. This is the shortest – six pieces – but also the most experimental, drawing on muezzin-like lines. 'Carnet de voyage' is a sequence evoking various works of art, dancing fauns, a Christmas scene, a stained-glass angel at Bourges. There is no way of telling in what order the pieces were composed, but I would guess that these are the earliest, having a sort of juvenile simplicity, although 'Les noces du Duc de Joyeuse' has a definite echo of Le bal de Beatrice d'Este, composed in 1905.

The final group is of eight pieces depicting Versailles. 'Le banc songeur' ('The bench dreamer') makes one think of one of Hahn's diary entries in his published journals (Notes d'un musicien; 1933). He visits Versailles and writes, 'Et puis, j'ai longuement pense a Marcel, a son isolement'. Although Hahn's passionate involvement with Marcel Proust had been in the 1890s, the two remained close friends throughout this period, even as Proust became more and more of a recluse. Is it just a coincidence that Proust's novel is A la recherche du temps perdu and that Reynaldo's bird is eperdu? The Versailles pieces reflect Hahn's then-unusual interest in seventeenth-century music, but the very last, 'Le pelerinage inutile', ends so abruptly that I wonder again if he really intended that the whole sequence should be played in one go.

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