DUPARC Complete Songs
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Signum Classics
Magazine Review Date: 09/2022
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 60
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: SIGCD715
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Chanson triste |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Sarah Connolly, Mezzo soprano |
Soupir |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Nicky Spence, Tenor |
Romance de Mignon |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Sarah Connolly, Mezzo soprano |
Sérénade |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Nicky Spence, Tenor |
(Le) Galop |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano William Thomas, Bass |
Extase |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Sarah Connolly, Mezzo soprano |
Élégie |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Sarah Connolly, Mezzo soprano |
(Le) Manoir de Rosemonde |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Huw Montague Rendall, Baritone Malcolm Martineau, Piano |
Sérénade florentine |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Nicky Spence, Tenor |
Lamento |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Huw Montague Rendall, Baritone Malcolm Martineau, Piano |
Phidylé |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Huw Montague Rendall, Baritone Malcolm Martineau, Piano |
Testament |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano Sarah Connolly, Mezzo soprano |
(La) Vie antérieure |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
Malcolm Martineau, Piano William Thomas, Bass |
Author: Tim Ashley
Listening to Malcolm Martineau’s album of Duparc’s songs, I was reminded not only how extraordinary they are, but also just how dark Duparc’s imagination could be on occasion. With their Wagnerian inflections and at times almost operatic weight, these are, of course, the songs that brought a new musical language and seriousness of purpose to the form in France, paving the way for so much that followed. We tend to think of Duparc as a Romantic eroticist, but when we hear his songs in toto, we’re confronted with dominant themes of emotional uncertainty and existential alienation: desire is associated with anticipation and yearning, rarely with fulfilment. Love, in ‘Le manoir de Rosemonde’, is compared to the bite of a dog that leaves an Amfortas-like open wound; and the hallucinatory ‘La vague et la cloche’, to a disturbing poem by François Coppée, collapses into a terrifying vision of ‘the eternal chaos of which human life is made’.
This is very much a recording in which we’re aware of Duparc’s edginess as well as his beauty. In some ways, it follows on from Martineau’s multi-volume surveys of Poulenc and Fauré, also for Signum, and echoes their formats in its division of the material between multiple singers. Unlike its predecessors, however, the songs are given in chronological order of composition, and there’s a notable gravitation towards lower voices – mezzo, baritone and bass: the handful of songs in higher keys are allocated to Nicky Spence, whose tenor is full, burnished, anything but lightweight. There’s a terrific and consistently persuasive grandeur and sweep in much of Martineau’s playing here, and he employs a wide dynamic range capable of encompassing everything from the percussive ferocity of ‘La vague et la cloche’ to the fragile delicacy of ‘Soupir’.
His singers by and large match his intensity. Sarah Connolly sounds sumptuous in ‘L’invitation au voyage’ and is beguiling – and appropriately Wagnerian – in ‘Extase’ and ‘Élégie’, where Duparc is thinking of Act 2 of Tristan and Brangäne in particular. Spence’s soft, high mezza voce is heard to advantage in the drowsy reverie of ‘Soupir’ and the slightly obsessive sensuality of ‘Sérénade florentine’. Bass William Thomas gives us not only a furious account of ‘La vague et la cloche’ but also, rather surprisingly, sings ‘La vie antérieure’: we’re used to higher voices here, though his sonorous tone and sensuous fervour prove remarkably compelling. The real revelation, though, is baritone Huw Montague Rendall, whose ‘Manoir de Rosemonde’ is among the finest and most unsettling on disc, superbly voiced and unsparingly vivid in his treatment of the text, qualities he also brings to the eerie ‘Lamento’. His ‘Phidylé’ is wonderful, too, in its passion and barely contained rapture. It’s a shame, though, that someone decided, for whatever reason, to omit ‘La fuite’, Duparc’s only duet, included in most complete recordings of his songs. Otherwise this is a fine and fascinating addition to his discography.
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