stlukesguild
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Listening to some musical equivalents of French Impressionism: Reynaldo Hahn. Hahn was an interesting figure. He was born in Venezuela in 1874 but his family moved to Paris when he was 3. He was a child prodigy, composing his first songs at 8 and entering the Paris Conservatoire at 10 where his teachers included Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns and Maurice Ravel was among his fellow students. He first drew attention with a song setting of a poem of Victor Hugo which resulted in his being invited into various artistic circles... at age 12! At 15 completed a series of song settings of Paul Verlaine that reportedly brought the poet to tears and led the poet Stéphane Mallarmé to write of him.
By the age of nineteen, Hahn had written many songs about love; however, his worldly sophistication masked shyness about his own personal feelings. He had close intimate friendships with women, and they were clearly fond of the gallant and charming young composer. Cléo de Mérode, a famous beauty of le beau monde and three years older than Hahn, inspired him to write: "I worship her as a great and perfect work of art". Despite this tribute to her, he reportedly loved her only at a distance his whole life. The famous courtesan Liane de Pougy referred to Hahn in her diary as the "sweetness in her life." Though they were close friends, their relationship ended when de Pougy married. Hahn was a closeted homosexual, even though in his personal letters he was frequently critical of homosexuals and homosexuality.
In 1894, Hahn met the aspiring writer Marcel Proust. Proust and Hahn shared a love for painting, literature, and the music of Fauré.
They travelled together and collaborated on various projects. One of those projects, Portraits de peintres, is a work consisting of spoken text with piano accompaniment. Hahn honed his writing skills during this period, becoming one of the best critics on music and musicians. Seldom appreciating his contemporaries, he instead admired the artists of the past. His writing, like Proust's, was characterised by a delicate skill in depicting small details.
Hahn specialised in conducting Mozart giving performances at the Salzburg Festival after World War I. He served in the 1920s & 1930s as general manager of the Cannes Casino opera house. For many years he was the influential music critic of the leading Paris daily, Le Figaro. As a composer, Hahn composed nearly 20 operas, 8 ballets, dozens of scores for incidental music to accompany various theatrical works, a formiddible oeuvre of chamber music, concertos, orchestral music, choral works, and music for solo piano... but his reputation continues to rest upon his songs or mélodie such as performed in the marvelous recording by Susan Graham.
The first song on this collection À Chloris is one of the finest of all French mélodie... and exquisitely performed by the countertenor, Philippe Jaroussky:
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