François-Xavier Roth / Les Siècles BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 GOSSEC Symphonie à 17 parties

SYMPHONY No. 5

 

Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth GUSTAV MAHLER Titan

Gustav Mahler was not yet thirty years old when he mounted the podium to conduct his ‘Symphonic Poem’ (Sinfonische Dichtung) in the Large Hall of the Redoute (Vigadó) in Budapest on 20 November 1889. The young man, who had recently been appointed director of the Hungarian capital’s opera house, was presenting an orchestral composition for the first time that evening. This work, which Mahler thought would be ‘child’s play’, was in fact - as he was to admit years later - “one of [his] boldest.” It is the crystallisation of his childhood, marked by the successive deaths of his brothers and sisters but also by the brutality of his father. The work also embodies the dreams that this rebellious young student at the Vienna Conservatory had already forged some ten years earlier, with the new generation of artists and thinkers of which he was a member.

In this album, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles have chosen to present Mahler’s First Symphony in its second version, that of Hamburg/Weimar (1893-94) - a unique opportunity to hear the symphonic poem Titan. By allowing us to follow the genesis of this first large scale work, Titan opens the doors of Mahler’s artistic workshop at a crucial moment in the creative process: the transition from the youthful effort of 1889 to the Symphony in D major of 1896, which established Mahler as one of the foremost symphonists of the modern era.

Sabine Devieilhe MIRAGES

This album came about through my desire to record Lakmé, a role that has been very dear to my heart since I first performed it on stage in 2012. It’s a part of which I know and love every single bar. 

For the character of Lakmé, Léo Delibes composed some of the most beautiful music ever written for coloratura soprano. His artistic approach was essentially a French one in that he always made the voice the centre of attention, with an orchestration that is at times diaphanous (when the heroine recites a prayer) and at times dazzling (in the great love duets). It was this work that sparked my love for French nineteenth-century opera. But Lakmé also came about within the context of European artists becoming more open to influences from distant lands. Western ears were at that time keen to be taken on musical and poetic journeys, and people were increasingly receptive to perfumes from afar.

This collection explores the dream of the East cultivated by Delibes and later by Maurice Delage, who actually went on an extended visit to India and brought back with him the modal colours of Indian music. It also touches on Japan and China, as seen through the prism of Messager’s Madame Chrysanthème and Stravinsky’s Rossignol, and Egypt, with the incantation sung by La Charmeuse in Thaïs. The element of fantasy also takes on a more folk-like and popular dimension, with settings by Ambroise Thomas and Berlioz of Ophelia’s strange song. With his music for Mélisande and Ariel, both of whom use their voices to sing and to charm, Debussy uses the exoticism of the modal scale to disconcert the listener and evoke an unspecified faraway place. 

So, ‘far from the real world’, as Lakmé says before her ‘Liebestod’, like the fantasy image of a distant country – let us indulge an innocent pleasure, and dream... (Sabine Devieilhe, 2017)