The Bourgie Hall celebrated the centenary of the death of Gabriel Fauré on Friday with a recital by French tenor Cyrille Dubois. The performance of this excellent artist whose interest was growing, and which culminated in five encores, very well exposed the ins and outs of the delicate genre of French melody.
In this recital prepared and presented in collaboration with the Palazzetto Bru Zane, tenor Cyrille Dubois compares melodies by Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) with those of contemporaries. Fauré’s work is presented chronologically, initiating four themes: “The instinct of feelings”; “Free yourself from romanticism”; “Initiating modernity” and “Heritage”. The first two parts revolve more around the period 1870-1882, while the last two take us from 1897 to 1921.
Style
In a brief notice, the Palazzetto Bru Zane gives Fauré the merit of having “appeased, at the dawn of the 20the century, a deeply divided French musical environment. The center of French romantic music also grants Fauré the rank of “ primus inter pares » among the melodists, and recalls that Fauré had expressed himself thus on the setting of poems to music: “Harmony must underline the deep feeling that the words only sketch”. The rest of the quote is crucial: “In “He cries in my heart as it rains on the city…”, the sound of the drops of water is only an accessory. Loving and worried lament is the main thing. The role of music is indeed this: to highlight the deep feeling which inhabits the poet’s soul and which sentences are powerless to convey with accuracy. »
As we have written on several occasions, notably when discussing the recording of Summer nights by Marie Nicole Lemieux, the art of French melody cannot sacrifice words, because they are the breeding ground that must be illustrated. There is therefore, to be found, a very subtle balance between the “said” and the “sound”, carrying harmonies, inflections and feelings. It’s not just a question of style. Certain voices, too, lend themselves better than others to the exercise. A famous range that has become very rare is that known as the “Martin baritone” (somewhere between the baritone and the tenor) and whose exquisite representative was Camille Maurane, as we wrote in our portrait for the Fauré centenary.
Cyrille Dubois has a luminous tenor tone that also lends itself beautifully to the genre. We were dazzled by this singer on the occasion of the release of his recital “So romantic! » by Alpha, major publication (rating 4.5) commented on in March 2023.
Course
Before commenting on the performance, a word about the program, absolutely perfect. The counterpoints to Fauré are enlightening and perfectly chosen: I breathe where you pulse by Benjamin Godard, as an example of romance, mirrored with the first Fauré, or Listen to the symphony by Théodore Dubois, placed after The craddles. The awesome Invitation to travel by Duparc closes the second part. In part “XXe century” emerge Dull hours by Nadia Boulanger (1910), to a text by Maeterlinck, and a mysterious Florent Schmitt, The boats (1897), at often unexpected intervals.
The chronological journey through Fauré’s work is revealing. We examine the more advanced harmonic work at the turn of the century. Obviously, The craddles (1879) is already a masterpiece, but following the journey, Reflections in the water op. 113 No. 2from the cycle of four melodies Mirages is an expression of quintessential Fauréan.
Associated with a first-rate “collaborating artist”, Tristan Raës, whose subtle nuances were a blessing in this music, Cyrille Dubois also delivered a crescendo recital. It is not because the voice is sumptuous and we do not see who could do better that we must nevertheless take at face value or as a model everything we have heard.
The five “bis”, Christmas, The secret, Love song, After a dream And Farewell were almost a full-fledged recital on another planet, the absolute one of French Melody with a capital “M” nourished by subtlety, readability and micro dosages. Pretending that we had this same refinement in The craddles or in the entire first half of the regular recital would be greatly exaggerated.
Flats
First, first instinct, we started by taking the printed text to follow the words. Go listen to Georges Thill, Charles Panzéra or Camille Maurane singing Fauré and see if you take your notebook!
In Tuscan Serenade2e melody of the evening, Cyrille Dubois gave a lot of voice. Even Thill doesn’t do as much, by far. It was so much so that we wondered if we were going to have a recital of French melodies or a singing tour. Despite an improvement in Godard’s melody and in The absent, it was necessary, in the first quarter, to hold on to the text.
In fact, the keen ear understood quite quickly, particularly in The craddles, otherwise always a little lazily articulated, the problem. There was “a little something”, minimal, but “not usual” in Cyrille Dubois’ voice: on certain pianissimos a mini scratchiness, an impurity (passage “through the soul of distant cradles”). The fear of this small recurring disturbance (“Comme un frais ray” in The Hummingbird“While singing” and “And their song” in Moonlight“At the bottom of the park” in Arpeggio“loving to torture me” in Appearance by Debussy) led Cyrille Dubois to enhance certain nuances and “say less”?
Basically, it didn’t bother me that much. And when the recital was over, the singer went into “total subtlety” mode in the encores, the “little scrapes” continued here and there, but we had so much more style and music than the we didn’t care at all. Moreover, Cyrille Dubois had applied this additional risk-taking gradually during the concert, unless it was the natural warming of the voice or the affinity with Fauré’s later style.
In our opinion, it was An invitation to travel by Duparc, very successful, which propelled parts III and IV of the recital to a whole new level of refinement. It’s a shame that in Part III, the applause after each melody prevented us from immersing ourselves further in an overall atmosphere, which was even more striking in Part IV with its largely aquatic theme. In The silent gift, The boats by Schmitt then Reflections in the water and the end of the recital, the subtlety of the moods, the accuracy of the style and the complicity between singer and pianist fully lived up to what was expected.
And the encores, it was said, were an apotheosis. We would have liked to hear again The craddles at that moment to see what Dubois, at his best, could do with it.