Stéphane Degout Wigmore Hall

Wonderful Wigmore Hall recital with Stéphane Degout and Simon Lepper. Degout is one of the great names in French repertoire and in French baroque in particular. He sang Thésée  in the Glyndebourne Hippolyte et Aricie (read more here) and works with conductors like William Christie, Marc Minkowski, Emmanuelle Haïm and René Jacobs. He's also an outstanding Pelléas. Friends of mine admired his singing - and much more - as the "naked" Hamlet at La Monnaie. We were thrilled to hear him sing this wide-ranging programme.

Provocatively, Degout and Lepper began with Schubert Der Zwerg (D771, c 1822), usually the preserve of darkhued German baritones. Nearly sixty years ago, Gérard Souzay and Dalton Baldwin shook the Lieder world with their unidiomatic but brilliant Schubert. Now, Degout and Lepper show how French style can bring out great insight.. Degout's higher, sharper timbre captured the eeriness in Carl Loewe's Edward (Op 1/1 1818)  sinisterly underlining the brutality in the poem.

The Wigmore Hall has been wise this year to feature the same group of songs in several different recitals, so we can hear how different artists approach them. In September Bryn Terfel sang  Schumann Belsazar op 57, 1840) (more here) , his huge voice emphasizing its vast panorama. Degout's Belsazar  emphasized the personal horror that befalls the King at the very moment of his triumph. Luca Pisaroni and Angelika Kirchschlager Franz Liszt's Die drei Zigeuner (S320, 1860), each with their own style. Degout's interpretation highlighted the sardonic wit at the heart of Lenau's poem, somewhat obscured by Liszt's preference for pianistic display. Lepper created Liszt's sounds of the fiddle and cimbalom, but Degout reminded us that the Gypsies don't care what the world thinks. "Wenn das Leben uns nachtet, wie man's verschläft, verraucht, vergeigt, und es dreimal verachtet" 

Degout connected this Liszt song with Kurt Weill Die Ballade vom entrunkenen Mädchen (1928), employing logic lost on those who don't really know the songs. The drowned girl putrefies. Even God forgets her. The gypsies are poor but they make the  most of what they have, while they can. For his encores, Degout chose Hugo Wolf Verborhgenheit and Francis Poulencs Hôtel. When life is tough, some gloomily philosophize.  "We French", said Degout with a sardonic grin, "We smoke". "Le soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre. Mais moi qui veux fumer pour faire des mirages", wrote Apollinaire, distilling vast cultural concepts in a few ironic words. 

Thus we were gently positioned to better appreciate the values of French song as an aesthetic subtly different from German Lieder. Degout sang Gabriel Fauré Automne (Op 18/5, 1870) , creating the melancholic mood so beautifully that the sudden crescendo on the last words "avaient oubliées!" intensified the sense of painful regret.  When Degout sang Fauré's L'horizon chimérique (Op 118, 1921) , I could hardly breathe lest I miss a moment. This was exquisite singing,,  each word elegantly shaped and coloured with intelligence, precision underlining the emotional freedom the ocean represents. Lepper's playing evoked he rhythm of turbulent waves. so Degout's voice seemed to soar. Agile, athletic phrasing bristling with energy, so the serenity of the moon in Diane, Séléné felt all the more tantalizing. "Et mon coeur, toujours las et toujours agité, Aspire vers la paix de ta nocturne flamme". Degout made each nuance count. When he sang "j'ai de grands départs inassouvis en moi", the delicate balance between emotion and restraint felt almost too much to bear. 

Degout followed Fauré with Liszt's Three Petrach Sonnets (S270/1 1842-6). Perhaps his grounding in baroque helps him sing Italian with a clarity one doesn't often here in these songs, but is in accord with the early music aesthetic of Petrarch's era. These songs can be done well in an Italianate fashion, but this showed how universal they can be. Lepper's playing was elegant, Degout's singing divine.

 photo : Julien Benhamou, IMG Artists

Les feuilles mortes: Kosma with harp

"Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle, Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi. 

Et le vent du nord les emporte Dans la nuit froide de l'oubli."

We've all heard the work of Joseph Kosma (1905-69). He wrote music for Jean Renoir's classics La grande illusion, La Règle du jeu, and for Marcel Carné Les enfants du Paradis and Les portes de la nuit, (1946). But Kosma was a serious "art" composer, who knew Bartok and Kodály. He worked for the Zig Zag theatre,  in Budapest, where Schoenberg and Webern were played. Moving to Berlin in 1928 he was part of Hanns Eisler's circle, and mixed with Bertolt Brecht. Escaping to Paris in 1933, Kosma knew no French, but said he was "determined to write songs whose aim would be not to merely entertain but also express man's fear of the menaces of the modern and inhuman world. For me it was  a simple question of conscience".

After hearing Matthias Goerne sing Schubert with harp instead of piano at the Wigmore Hall with Sarah Christ (more HERE), I wanted to hear more. Now, I'm listening to 30 Chansons de Joseph Kosma from the French label Mécénat Musical (disrtribued by Harmonia Mundi). The singer is Françoise  Masset and the harpist is Christine Icart. There are other collections of Kosma songs to listen to but I like this because harp gives them delicacy and innocence.

It matters, interpretively.  Kosma himself wrote : "Il me faiilait acquérir l'elegance de la mélodie français ; et por cela, je cherchais le poete qui exprimerait cette réalité avec l'esprit a foie étincelant et retenu qui caractérise les grands poetes français". Kosma worked very closely with Jacques Prévert, and twenty of the songs in this set are to texts by the poet. At least 21 of the 50 songs Kosma wrote to texts by Prévert end piano or pianissimo, dissipating elusively, hovering into uncertainty. 

When Yves Montand sang Les feuilles morte in the movie Les portes de la nuit (1946), he sang with gruff Gauloise-soaked rasps. When Masset sings it, her voice floats lightly. "C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble. Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais.......Et la mer efface sur le sable, Les pas des amants désunis."  Now the song seems elusive, quite haunting, like haze above water and the silent falling of leaves. All three original verses, too, to extend the atmosphere.Yet there are troubling undertones to this lightness. "Rappelle-toi, Barbara" sing Masset in another well known song (from the same film). The poet uses "toi", and the song seems intimate, but he doesn't know the woman, or her male friend, or even if they're still alive. "Quelle connerie la guerre, Qu'es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de fer, De feu d'acier de sang". From quasi-folk melody to numbed grief in under three imnutes.

Like Poulenc and so many other Parisian sophisticates, Kosma could satirize the banal and make it witty. L'orgue de Barbarie, Art poétque  I&II  and Le miroir brisé dance along lyrically, but pack a stylish punch. Maset can sing with gleeful humour.  "Et la fête continue!" she sings with relish: one thinks of the circus master in Lulu. In La jour de fête she sings two contrasting voices. Masset's background is in baroque but she also sings new music and works in music theatre. The harp acts, too, Icart makes the instrument sound like a guitar in On frappe and Le guitare solaire. The transpositions, by Stéphan Aubé, are elegant and understated. 

Les feuilles mortes became a big hit and an English version was written by Johnny Mercer. There was also an American movie "Autumn Leaves" which elimanted the wartime and political context of the original French film.  The song became a jazz classic, recorded by Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald and others. All valid because it's a good tune, and the bar room setting of the original film lends itself to jazz club reverie. But, having heard this recording with harp accompnaiment, I'm much more attuned to Kosma as "art song", elusive and delicate.  Much closer in spirit, I think, to Debussy's Les Feuilles mortes" as my friend Mark Berry remarked.

photo : Masaki Ikeda