Perfect Love, Doomed Love
Donald Macleod focuses on a failed collaboration, a professorship and Faure making his mark in London.
Donald Macleod follows the dramatic thread running through Gabriel Faur茅's musical output. Today, a failed collaboration; a professorship; and Faur茅 makes his mark in London.
A 25,000-franc commission to create a music drama for the inauguration of a wealthy heiress's magnificent new music room, with one of the century's most celebrated poets as your librettist - what could possibly go wrong? In the event, the project barely got off the starting-blocks. Despite the good offices of the Princesse de Polignac - a.k.a. Winnaretta Singer, heiress to the sewing-machine fortune - Faur茅 couldn't even agree on a subject with the eminent but ailing Paul Verlaine. So no collaboration, but Faur茅 did go on to set some of Verlaine's poetry to music - his song-cycle La bonne chanson, which charts the course of a perfect, immutable love, being a marvellous example. Love of the doomed, catastrophic kind was the subject-matter of Maurice Maeterlinck's play Pell茅as et M茅lisande, and it drew from Faur茅 some of his most touching music, commissioned for a London production in 1898.
S茅r茅nade du Bourgeois Gentilhomme ('Je languis nuit et jour')
G茅rard Souzay, baritone
Dalton Baldwin, piano
La bonne chanson, Op 61
Karine Deshayes, mezzo-soprano
Ensemble Contraste
Fantaisie for flute and piano, Op 79
Michel Debost, flute
Jean-Philippe Collard, piano
P茅lleas et M茅lisande - Suite, Op 80
Jill Gomez, soprano
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
David Zinman, conductor
Producer: Chris Barstow.
Last on
Music Played
-
Gabriel Faur茅
Serenade du bourgeois gentilhomme
Performer: Dalton Baldwin. Singer: G茅rard Souzay.- BRILLIANT : 92792.
- BRILLIANT.
- 30.
-
Gabriel Faur茅
La Bonne chanson Op.61
Performer: Karine Deshayes. Performer: Ensemble Contraste.- ZIGZAG: ZZT110302.
- ZIGZAG.
- ZZT110302.
- 5.
-
Gabriel Faur茅
Fantaisie Op.79
Performer: Michel Debost. Performer: Jean鈥怭hilippe Collard.- EMI:336126 2.
- EMI.
- 5.
-
Gabriel Faur茅
Pelleas et Melisande - suite Op.80
Singer: Jill Gomez. Orchestra: Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: David Zinman.- PHILIPS : 446-201-2.
- PHILIPS.
- 9.
Broadcasts
- Tue 22 Nov 2016 12:00大象传媒 Radio 3
- Tue 22 Nov 2016 18:30大象传媒 Radio 3
Vaughan Williams Today
Beethoven Unleashed 鈥 the box set
What was really wrong with Beethoven?
Composers A to Z
Who knew? Five eye-opening stories from Composer of the Week
Five reasons why we love Parry's Jerusalem
What is the strange power of Jerusalem which makes strong men weep?
A man out of time 鈥 why Parry's music and ideas were at odds with his image...
The composer of Jerusalem was very far from the conservative figure his image suggests.
Composer Help Page
Find resources and contacts for composers from within the classical music industry.