Chausson: Poème de l'amour et de la mer & Symphonie Op. 20

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A performance that ranks, unquestionably, among the finest to date. Superbly sung, and wonderfully well conducted and played by Alexandre Bloch and his Lille orchestra, this is an interpretation... — Gramophone Magazine, June 2019 More…

Release Date: 15th Mar 2019
Catalogue No: ALPHA441
Label: Alpha
Length: 60 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

March 2019
Record Review

27th April 2019

Record of the Week
Gramophone Magazine

June 2019

Editor's Choice
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2019
The Guardian Classical Albums of the Year

2019
Gramophone Awards

2020

Shortlisted - Solo Vocal

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Chausson: Poème de l'amour et de la mer, Op. 19

Work length24:15

$4.55

$6.85

$9.15

Alexandre Bloch, Orchestre National de Lille, Véronique Gens

I. La fleur des eaux

Track length10:02

$1.50

$2.30

$3.05

Interlude

Track length2:17

$1.00

$1.50

$2.05

II. La mort de l'amour

Track length11:56

$2.05

$3.05

$4.05

Chausson: Symphony in B flat major, Op. 20

Work length35:48

$5.60

$8.40

$11.15

Alexandre Bloch, Orchestre National de Lille

I. Lent - Allegro vivo

Track length12:33

$2.05

$3.05

$4.05

II. Très lent

Track length8:56

$1.50

$2.30

$3.05

III. Animé

Track length14:19

$2.05

$3.05

$4.05

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Ernest Chausson is a most unusual figure in French music, positioned at the crossroads where the romanticism of Berlioz and Franck meet the language of Wagner and the symbolism of the young Debussy. His Poème de l amour et de la mer is a unique score for the period and certainly his greatest work; simultaneously a profane, naturistic cantata, a monologue, and a song cycle, it was composed between 1882 and 1892.

Véronique Gens is recording this cycle for the first time, although she has already issued Le temps des lilas with Susan Manoff at the piano for her disc Néère (ALPHA 215), about which Ernst Van Bek wrote in Classiquenews: it mesmerises with the nuancing of its colours, the allusive precision of every sung word. Véronique Gens talent is equally on display in this recording too, with the Orchestre National de Lille an orchestra she already knows well under Alexandre Bloch, its new chief conductor, whose appointment and first concerts and recordings have already caused a sensation... The Symphony in B flat major completes this programme: a summit of French symphonic writing, for some a milestone as important as the Symphony in D of Chausson's teacher.

Reviews

June 2019

A performance that ranks, unquestionably, among the finest to date. Superbly sung, and wonderfully well conducted and played by Alexandre Bloch and his Lille orchestra, this is an interpretation of great beauty and insight. Gens’s dark tone and her ability to fuse sound with sense allow her both to encompass the work’s rapturous lyricism and to map out the psychological subtlety of its depiction of the painful end of an affair.

March 2019

Chausson’s sensual ‘poem of love and the sea’ could have been tailor-made for Gens, whose onyx-bright soprano is capable of incredible nuance and rides the quasi-Wagnerian orchestral outbursts with ease; the lesser-known Symphony (premiered two years earlier than the song-cycle) also receives a persuasive performance from Bloch and the Lille orchestra, but buy this for the Poème.

24th March 2019

Gens’s crystalline sound and immaculate diction are a bonus in these sumptuous settings of poems by Maurice Bouchor...The Symphony is more seldom recorded (or programmed live), but benefits here from Bloch’s idiomatic sense of drama and evocation of atmosphere…Superb.

31st March 2019

The composer’s only symphony, in B flat, opens in bright, soaring mood, with a yearning slow movement and an “animé” finale that pulls all the work’s ideas together. Perhaps it doesn’t quite cut it as a masterpiece, but the Lille players and Bloch make a fluent, idiomatic case. The presence of Gens in the gorgeous Poème is the real draw here.

Opera Now June 2019

Like the best performers of song, she sings in a straightforward manner, no with pecking, swooping or breathiness. Her diction is crisp and allow us to enjoy the poetry of Maurice Bouchor. A gem of simplicity and elegance. Gens is aided by Alexandre Bloch’s conducting, which is well-paced and never over-indulgent, yet still seductive.

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Chausson: Poème de l'amour et de la mer & Symphonie Op. 20

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