Wigmore Hall
Gounod:
Où
voulez-vous aller?; Le Soir; O ma belle rebelle; Sérénade;
Mignon; Viens, les gazons sont verts
Edmond
de Polignac: Lamento
Massenet:
Chant
provençal; Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne
Duparc:
Chanson
triste; La Vie antérieure; Extase; Lamento
Reynaldo
Hahn: Le Rossignol des lilas; Mai; Les Cygnes; Infidélité; Rêverie
Offenbach:
Six
Fables de La Fontaine: ‘La
Cigale et la fourmi’, ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’
Véronique Gens (soprano)
Susan Manoff (piano)
It came as quite a surprise throughout
much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing
of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique
Gens. With the best will in the world, it could hardly be claimed that the
songs of Gounod and Massenet are possessed of remarkably piano parts. And yet,
from the prelude to the opening Où
voulez-vous aller, it was often the piano that proved more communicative,
that grabbed and retained my interest. Indeed, Manoff’s evident love for the music
and for music-making in general proved so infections that I found more in the
songs, especially Gounod’s, than I might ever have imagined possible. Whether
it were her teasing, effortlessly ‘natural’ rubato in the Lamartine setting, Le Soir, the immediate establishment of
a cradle rhythm, and her play therewith, in the Hugo Sérénade, or the unerring sense of line and shaping the song as a
whole in Mignon, (sort of) after
Goethe, it would have been more or less impossible not to warm to these
performance. I certainly did not try. Likewise in the rhythms of Massenet’s Nuit d’Espagne.
‘Generative’ might be thought too Teutonic a way of considering the music in a
song like that; it was nevertheless the word that came to mind to this
incorrigible Teutonophile.
Gens sometimes sounded reticent
by comparison, rather as if she were holding something back for the second
half. Perhaps she was. Not that there was nothing to admire. Above all, there
was her ready way with the texts and her cleanness of line. A touch more
vibrato might on occasion, though, have been welcome – at least to me. The
tasteful sadness of Massenet’s Elégie
prove eminently satisfying, though. In Edmond de Polignac’s Lamento, simple and well-formed, far
more than a mere curiosity, both artists left one wanting more. The piano’s
harmonic inflections nevertheless proved the key, or so it seemed.
If I found Gens at times a
little ‘white’ of voice in Duparc’s songs – Vie
antérieure in particular – that is more a matter of taste than anything
else. It remained, however, the piano
parts in which I found, again to my surprise, the greater interest, at least
until the Théophile Gautier setting, Lamento.
Contemplation of the white tomb, as opposed to entombment itself, was very much
the thing – until the high drama (relatively speaking) of the third and final
stanza. ‘Ah! jamais plus près de la tombe je n’irai…’
Try as I might, I cannot summon
up the enthusiasm shared by so many for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, whether in
the second half proper, or as encores. Nevertheless, I found myself well able
to appreciate the darker undercurrents of a song such as Mai in performance. Likewise that ineffably Gallic regret – a
cliché, I know, but what of it? – in Infidélité,
another Gautier setting. Moreover, the way Manoff set up musical expectations
through rhythm in the Hugo Rêverie
reminded me very much of the opening Gounod set.
Offenbach’s cynical humour is probably
just more appealing to me. I do not think I had ever heard his songs before.
The two pieces from his Six Fables de La
Fontaine, pretty much operettic scenas in their own right, made me keen to
hear more. Gens now seemed far more at ease, more readily communicative. ‘She
played humorously with the closing phrase of ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’ – ‘qu’on
ne l’y prendrait plus’ – with no need to underline. The preceding ‘La Cigale et
la fourmi’ closed with a true invitation to the dance. This was by now a true
partnership, whether between soprano and pianist or grasshopper and ant.