The soprano Karina Gauvin has just published a very original album with Atma, Marie Hubert. Daughter of the Kingrecounting, through folklore songs from Quebec and France, the life of Marie Hubert, one of the “Filles du Roy” who came to New France among 800 marriageable young French women.
When we hear The good song, Gay lon la, gay the rosebush, Isabeau walks there or The hamlet bells, It’s the beautiful Françoise, I hear the windmill, I danced so much Or Long live the Canadian adorned with dapper winds or a mutinous harp, we say to ourselves that the spirit of Songs of Auvergne de Canteloube infused for exactly a century to become “Songs of New France”. This means that Karina Gauvin surprises, by adorning these songs with such rich finery.
Genealogy
We have often talked about the “pandemic projects” of classical artists. Here is that of our national soprano. “I’ve wanted to present a project around folk melodies for a long time, but not in a traditional way. When we think about the first half of the 20th centurye century, folklore was very popular, and vocal singers sang it a lot in Quebec,” Karina Gauvin tells us.
Through the ten albums published between 1937 and 1951 by La bonne chanson, publishing company of Abbot Charles-Émile Gadbois, we find a number of songs that were sung in Quebec homes at the time. “An experienced musician, Father Gadbois had not only collected many Quebec and French songs and published this folklore, but he had also asked several experienced musicians, such as Gabriel Cusson, Ernest MacMillan, Michel Perrault and Oscar O’Brien to “write harmonizations,” specifies the soprano.
During the pandemic, Karina Gauvin delved into a stock of scores that she had owned for around thirty years. “I started to go through this lot. Some songs stood out for their high-quality harmonizations. I made a pile of very interesting songs. There were a few dozen, but I was wondering how to present it to make it interesting. »
It was chance that did things. “My cousin, at the same time, was completing genealogical research which traced a lineage on my mother’s side to Marie Hubert, daughter of the King, who came to New France in 1670 at the age of 15. And then I had a flash: “I have my vein; I am going to present a show where I tell the life of Marie Hubert through these folk songs”. I constructed the life of a woman in seven scenes of three songs based on documented historical facts. » The show will have its grand premiere at the Classica Festival in Boucherville on Tuesday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.
The last stage of the project was that of orchestration. “I asked Claude Lapalme if he wanted to embark on a project consisting of keeping the harmonizations, because that’s the sound I was looking for. In certain places, we worked on things to add a few measures, here an introduction, there an ending,” says Karina Gauvin.
“People are very intrigued, because we have always heard this folklore in a more “trad” way. Listening to it in this more lush way, it does something very different. The objective is to restore the nobility of this repertoire, which is truly magnificent, which contains very touching things. »
The very Canteloube color comes from the spirit of the times which permeated Cusson, MacMillan and the others at the time, since they shared the composer’s era. “It’s the flavor of the times, and it was done with great taste and know-how,” judges Karina Gauvin. The set created by Claude Lapalme involves the Molinari Quartet, Pentaèdre, Valérie Milot on harp, Pierre McLean on piano and harpsichord, as well as Étienne Lafrance on double bass, a team whose lightness is very welcome.