Jules Massenet - Songs with Orchestra I (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Jules Massenet

1. Pensée de printemps
2. Le poète et le fantôme
3. Hymne d’amour
4. Amoureuse
5. Si tu veux, mignonne
6. Chant provençal
7. Rêverie de Colombine
8. Souvenez-vous, Vierge Marie !
9. Les enfants
10. Pensée d’automne
11. Baiser-Impromptu
12. Je t’aime
13. À Colombine
14. Scène religieuse
15. Sœur d’élection
16. Crépuscule
17. Aurore
18. Pitchounette
19. L’improvisatore
20. Les fleurs
21. Menuet d’amour
22. Marquise
23. On dit !
24. Musette
25. La Chanson de Musette

Chantal Santon Jeffery, soprano

Jodie Devos, soprano

Nicole Car, soprano

Véronique Gens, soprano

Cyrille Dubois, tenor

Étienne Dupuis, baritone

Orchestre de chambre de Paris

Hervé Niquet, conductor

Date: 2022

Label: Bru Zane

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Review

Of the 22 songs included here, all except one are recorded for the first time, so anyone with an interest in Massenet or in the French mélodie is likely to want this recording. Inevitably some of the six singers seem more at home than others.

Véronique Gens of course is an artist to treasure and as always she responds alertly to the demands of text and melodic line. Of the others, I was especially taken by the tenor Cyrille Dubois, who is surely not far from being that quintessential French voice the ‘Trial’, required by Ravel for the role of Torquemada in L’heure espagnole. It’s a light voice, projected by exemplary diction, with a finely controlled top – Dubois closes the selection with a thrown-away top C.

Although the operas Manon and Werther show Massenet’s great talent as a dramatist, one should not look to these songs for deep emotion. Nor is this statement a complaint. The realist in Massenet prevented him from trying to condense such emotion into a three-minute song, when his talents in this genre were for much longer forms. Some of the most delightful music here, orchestrated with elegant accuracy, comes in the jolly, jokey songs such as ‘Aurore’ and ‘Pitchounette’, reminding us of the composer’s gift (too rarely exercised, in my view) for comic invention. Call this recording one of ‘easy listening’ if you like, but in these times of war, strikes and inflation, surely such finely crafted and enjoyable works have their place.

— Roger Nichols

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Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer. Born near Saint-Étienne, France, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Ambroise Thomas and won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1863. Massenet composed more than 24 operas; his most famous works include Manon, Werther and Thaïs. In addition to opera, he wrote more than 200 songs, a piano concerto, orchestral suites and oratorios. Massenet was also highly influential as a teacher of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné.

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