Category: Opera

~ Author: Oberon

A new disc from tenor Nicholas Phan has come my way. Entitled ILLUMINATIONS, the CD features works by Britten, Debussy, and Fauré. During the classical music season, I don’t listen to a lot of music at home; I’m so busy attending and writing about live performances that I need downtime during the day so that everything stays fresh. But Mr. Phan’s voice being a particular favorite of mine, and the repertory on ILLUMINATIONS being extremely enticing, I soon found time to listen.

Having Myra Huang at the keyboard is an added attraction: she and Mr. Phan gave a memorable recital at the Caspary Auditorium in 2009, and their work together on ILLUMINATIONS confirms the appeal of their partnership.

While the three composers represented on the disc are all high on my list of favorites, Gabriel Fauré‘s La Bonne Chanson is the least-familiar to me of the pieces Mr. Phan has programmed. These songs were composed mainly in the summers of 1892 and 1893, when the composer had fallen in love with the soprano Emma Bardac, a married woman. Fauré chose poems by Paul Verlaine that reflected his romantic exultation; the cycle – for voice, piano, and string quartet – is dedicated to Mme. Bardac, who later married Claude Debussy.

Even before we hear the voice of Mr. Phan on the recording, the briefest opening phrase from the Telegraph Quartet establishes the mood. The tenor then begins to sing – “Une Sainte en son aureole” – and his expressive gifts are immediately evident, the words coloured by a sense of romance that is at once calm and urgent. Ms. Huang’s rippling piano motif sets the mood for “Puisque l’aube grandit“, the singing filled with desire which becomes quietly rhapsodic.

To a gently rolling accompaniment, “La Lune blanche luit dans les bois” evokes moonlight; the words themselves are picturesque, and on the final phrase – ‘C’est l’heure exquise!’ – Mr. Phan rises to a delicately perfumed finish. “J’allais par des chemins perfides” brims with the glow of reassuring love and companionship, wherein the tenor paints with delicious vocal colours. At first expressing a fear of loving too much – too deeply – “J’ai presque peur, en verite” settles into steadfastness, the lover prepared to face any potential setbacks to his infatuation.

Whispering piano and poignant strings open “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles“; the music takes on a fluttery feel as the poet sings of birds in flight and breezes on the meadow. In this song, Mr. Phan ideally captures a sense of wonderment before powerfully summoning his beloved from slumber to greet the sunrise Following on, “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’ete” is all light and joy until the final verse becomes a hymn to married love. 

The tenor brings poetic nuances, supported by tender strings, to “N’est-ce pas?” This song is dreamy at first, becoming more passionate. A silken violin passage sustains the romantic atmosphere: the lovers will face the future with hope: ‘Our love is unalloyed…isn’t that so?’ Animated piano figurations announce the end of Winter in “L’hiver a cesse“; straightforward lyricism from the singer greets the Spring, confident of his future. The song’s final reflective phrases tell of his assured delight in their love.

I can’t recall ever having heard Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées sung by male voice before. The six poems by Paul Verlaine that make up the set Debussy published in 1903 were revisions of originals the composer had written between 1885 and 1887. The dedication of the 1903 edition is to Mary Garden, ‘an unforgettable Mélisande’, though they were not necessarily meant for her particular voice. Mr. Phan and Ms. Huang make magic with them.

“C’est l’extase langoureuse” is sung and played with dreamy softness. Sounds of nature are evoked before passion briefly rouses itself. The song fades to a whisper.

“Il pleure dans mon coeur” is pervaded with an air of gentle sadness. The piano murmurs quietly in a raindrop motif. The tenderness in Mr. Phan’s voice  at “Il pleure sans raison” (“To weep without reason”) is ravishing; Ms. Huang’s playing has a haunting sense of fragility. The two artists maintain their sense of the poetic in the quiet despair of “L’ombre des arbres“, Mr. Phan’s final phrases here can only be described as exquisite.

The mood brightens considerably in “Chevaux de bois“, a song about the wooden horses on a merry-go-round. The amusing text pours out over lively piano motifs. At nightfall, the music calms, and the final verse is very gently sung. The carousel runs down.

“Green” finds the poet bringing flowers and fronds to his beloved, suggesting that they nap together  – though he probably has something else in mind. The rippling piano speaks of his restlessness before calming to a hushed state of day-dreaming.

The final song, Spleen, has a simple start from the piano. It’s a song about lost love, and of recalling happier times when one is in despair. Mr. Phan’s final sigh of “…hélas…” signals his resignation.

It was through Elisabeth Söderström‘s intriguing recording that I became familiar with Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations. These settings of poems by Arthur Rimbaud, begun in Suffolk in March 1939 and completed a few months later in the USA, were originally written for soprano Sophie Wyss. The songs are often performed by a tenor: Britten’s longtime lover and muse Peter Pears sang them frequently in recitals, starting in 1941.

Rimbaud (1854-1891) wrote all of his poetry in a three-year period from 1872-1875. His writing career, often under the influence of hashish, was marked by disappointment, restlessness, and scandals involving  Rimbaud and his fellow poet Paul Verlaine. The poems of Les Illuminations were probably his last creative efforts.

Britten chose a sentence from one of the poems as a sort of emblem for the cycle: “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage” (“I alone have the key to this savage parade”). This phrase is sung three times in the course of the songs.

The songs might be thought of as a series of dreams. That’s how I felt listening to them in Mr. Phan’s rendering, wherein he forms a marvelous collaboration with the orchestral collective The Knights.

Opening with instrumental shivers of anticipation and heraldry, Fanfare brings the first declaration of “I alone have the key to this savage parade!”, the song’s only text. A poignant violin solo follows. Pulsing strings and urgency of expression – excitement, in fact – from the singer fill Villes: descriptions of the rush and clamour of cities. The music accelerates to a gallop before calming again, letting the strings sputter out.

Phrase is eerie, high, quietly ecstatic…and brief. Mr. Phan’s evocative final phrase, “Et je danse…” is dreamy indeed. Antique, which follows immediately, is plaintive and erotically tinged. Over delicately strummed strings, the singer’s soft singing delights again, as does a lingering violin. Royaute is a vivid, strutting salute to self-proclaimed royalty; in Marine, the tenor sings the words on isolated notes, with a downward swoop at the end. Interlude brings a repeat of the emblematic ‘key’ phrase.

Being Beauteous, the longest song of the cycle, has a sweetly langourous feel, and Mr. Phan sings it like a vocal caress. The music becomes more animated, but then reclines again. The violin ascends, and the tenor offers some of the disc’s most beautifully expressive singing here. The end of the song strikes me as ironic, with its gentle string flurry.

Parade sings of the great sideshow of life, its feeling droll and swaggering. The singer again reminds us that he alone holds the key to these visions. The music is march-like, trilling itself away. For the final Départ, the poet anticipates moving on to new loves, new views, new sensations. But it ends on a darkish note.

~ Oberon