Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: |
|
|
Outil de traduction (Très approximatif) |
|
|
Reviewer: Simon
Heighes One of the most theatrical ceremonies of Holy Week was the night office of Tenebrae. As the service progressed, darkness slowly descended on the thoughtful congregation as the 15 candles set on a great triangular candelabrum were extinguished one by one. Music played a crucial role in the magic. During these services, which were originally held in the early hours of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, three 'lessons' from the Old Testament were sung to plainchant or specially composed music. By François Couperin's time Tenebrae services were celebrated the preceding evening, which is why he entitles Thursday's lesson as being for 'Mercredy', and so on.
Couperin probably set all nine lessons, though only those for Maundy Thursday have survived ‑ composed and published around 1715. The texts of these first three Lessons vividly relate the aftermath of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Couperin's response is intensely personal and moving.The first two are scored for just soprano and continuo, while the final Lesson calls for two sopranos ‑ reflecting the modest resources available to the nuns of Longchamp Abbey near Paris for whom they were probably written.
Couperin's Leçons de ténèbres have been recorded with countertenors (James Bowman and Michael Chance) but more frequently and convincingly with pairs of sopranos. Vincent Dumestre bas chosen two tonally distinct but evenly matched sopranos, with clear, wellcentred voices. Hasnaa Bennani has the more polished tone, though prone to slightly random application of vibrato on sustained notes. Mezzo‑soprano Isabelle Druet has a brighter edge and tends to apply a full tone fairly consistently, rather than offering gradations of timbre or much dynamic shading. In their solo Lessons, as well as the Third Lesson which they sing together, both singers are instinctive with Couperin's supple, declamatory vocal lines as well as his sustained lyricism in the luxuriant Hebrew letters which punctuate each verse.
The overall mood of th perormance is of modest reserve and cool, controlled emotionalism - in tune with the liturgical purpose of the original service. Bennani and Druet are nowhere near as rhetorically aware as Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau in Christophe Rousset's 1999 recording - my benchmark ‑ and their range of tone colours is much more muted. Whereas Gens and Piau live, breathe and suffer every note of the richly painful Third Lesson from the inside, Bennani and Druet offer more of a commentary ‑ extremely engaging but at a respectful arm's length (a perfectly reasonable place to be). The simple continuo accompaniment is expressively divided between organ and harpsichord, and even though Couperin didn't actually call for a theorbo, its presence here, played by Dumestre, is telling, often audibly guiding the pace and mood. The recording, made in the resonant Royal Chapel at Versailles, adds an appropriate sense of occasion and plenty of atmosphere. The continuo group sounds fairly close, while the singers' voices are given more of a lift by the acoustic ‑ to extremely sonorous effect in the close‑harmony duetting of the Third Lesson.
The other essential ingredient of Holy Week services was a setting of Psalm 50 (or 51, depending on the tradition). The three‑voice setting of the Miserere by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault is, for me, the highlight here. It's not a work I've heard before, probably because there are problems with its poor‑quality manuscript sources, and a reliable edition has been hard to produce. But running to 25 minutes, this is a substantial piece of considerable expressive variety and power. What's rather unusual is that it's scored for three equal soprano voices, a rare texture which allows Clérambault to indulge in biting close‑harmony dissonances of exquisite boldness. Bennani and Druet are joined here by the wonderful Claire Lefilliâtre, and together their tuning and ensemble are chillingly beautiful: bittersweet at the very opening; stark naked (a cappella) at the start of the fifth movement; and rhetorically rebarbative at the opening of tht sixth. Clérambault brilliandy interleaves solo and three‑part textures to create a wonderfully varied whole ‑ and a little French Baroque masterpiece. (The translation and lack of proof‑reading of some of the booklet notes are less masterly, but not a deal‑breaker.) A pleasure to recommend.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cliquez l'un ou l'autre
bouton pour découvrir bien d'autres critiques de CD |
|
