On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we get Sharp, as baritone William Sharp performs Gabriel Fauré’s cycle of nine mélodies, “La bonne chanson.”
These settings of poetry by Paul Verlaine were composed in the summers of 1892 and 1893, while Fauré was a guest of banker Sigismond Bardac and his wife (with whom Fauré was in love), soprano Emma Bardac. Fauré would compose the “Dolly Suite” for Bardac’s daughter, but it was Claude Debussy for whom she left her husband and eventually married.
In 1898, Fauré expanded the accompaniment to “La bonne chanson” to include a string quartet. The cycle contains a number of musical themes that recur from song to song. The piece was much admired by Proust, though Saint-Saëns thought the composer had gone mad.
We’ll hear a performance from the 1984 Marlboro Music Festival. Sharp is joined by violinists Carmit Zori and Margaret Batjer, violist John Graham, cellist Ulrich Boeckheler, and pianist Luis Batlle.
Francis Poulenc labored over his Sextet for Piano and Winds for the better part of a decade. The work was given its premiere, in its original version, in 1931. Then it underwent a complete overhaul, so that the composer regarded it as an entirely different piece at its first performance, in this second incarnation, two years later. In 1939, with Europe on the brink of war, Poulenc extensively revised it again. The sextet reached its definitive form, with France under Nazi occupation, in 1940. The outer movements are frantic, but at the work’s core is the soul of the composer, jovial, wistful, and altogether irresistible.
We’ll hear it performed at Marlboro in 2015, by flutist Marina Piccinini, oboist Mark Lynch, clarinetist Narek Arutyunian, bassoonist Brad Balliett, hornist Lauren Hunt, and pianist Zoltan Fejérvári.
Since we’re in midst of a membership campaign, the rest of the program will unfurl as time allows. I would love to share Maurice Ravel’s “Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé” – it would be a nice way to round out the hour, and an appropriate bookend to Fauré’s mélodies after Verlaine – but more than likely it will be his “Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet.”
Which reminds me, it’s the end of our fiscal year! Please support us by calling 1-888-232-1212, or by contributing online at wwfm.org (click on “donate”).
Then pardon my French. I’ll be talking a sacre bleu streak on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
Incidentally, if you are a William Sharp fan, you’ll want to tune in on Friday at 8 p.m. for a rebroadcast of Bernard Herrmann’s music for the radio play “Whitman.” The concert was given at Washington’s National Cathedral on June 1. Sharp will be heard in the title role, reciting Whitman’s poetry, with the PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Also on the program will be Herrmann’s Clarinet Quintet, “Souvenirs de Voyage,” and “Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra.”
PHOTOS: The young Fauré (left) and William Sharp, channeling his hair
