Ravel’s ‘Chansons Madecasse’ Soar on Tarver’s Expressive Vocals
Hearing art song live nowadays is a rare occurrence (why is it programmed so infrequently?), but Friday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall the Seattle Symphony chamber series included Ravel’s gorgeous “Chansons Madecasse” (“Madagascan songs”) sung by the Symphony’s featured artist this year, tenor Kenneth Tarver. (Tarver also sang the solo in the Berlioz Requiem with the SSO this weekend.)
The three poems by Évariste Desiré de Forges Parny are troubling in today’s environment, written when the poet was in France’s colonial administration in Africa. They give a clear impression that the speaker is a white boss in a black land, though the central one of the three poems, “Aoua! Aoua!,” is purported to be from the point of view of the workers and essentially says “Don’t trust the whites, they were brutal to us.”
The first, “Nahandove,” is the delicately sensuous description of an erotic encounter: the last, “Il est doux“(“It is sweet”), recounts the speaker lounging under a tree watching the women work.
Ravel’s music, however, is what makes these so memorable, particularly the yearning, adoring tone of “Nahandove,” with its frequent iteration of the name on the same three notes and the rising excitement mirroring the words, all to a solo cello accompaniment at first, adding other instruments as the song continues. The loud clashing start of “Aoua! Aoua!” brings out the angry warning, the apprehension, the shouting, while the last song seems to emphasize the protagonist’s alone-ness in this environment.
These songs are often sung by women, but it makes more sense to have a male protagonist, and Tarver gave them the right meaning with his expressive voice which fit Ravel’s musical style.
The other notable work on the program was Schubert’s last quintet, in C major and for the unusual instrumentation of two violins, played by Artur Girsky and Natasha Bazhanov; one viola, Sayaka Kokubo; and two cellos, Meeka Quan DiLorenzo and Efe Baltacigil.
It’s not that the music was unfamiliar, it’s that the performance was so outstanding. These five symphony musicians played as though they had been chamber music colleagues for years, their synchronization was so good. The nuances, the balance between instruments, the shape of the work and the style of playing they all employed were superb. The many melodic duets between Girsky and DiLorenzo; the steady inner voices, always together, of Bazhanov and Kokubo, the grounding of Baltacigil; the artistry with which DiLorenzo shaped her long plucking sections, all was sheer pleasure to hear. From Girsky on, the musicians played as though they simply released the sound from their instruments, never forcing or pushing it. It was a wonderfully satisfying performance.
To start the program came an amusing brass sonata by Poulenc in which the composer let loose his comedic impulses and the SSO players embraced them. Horn player John Turman, trumpeter Alexander White and trombonist David Lawrence Ritt made it highly amusing and the audience loved it. After that and before the Ravel came a complete contrast, Ligeti’s Trio for horn violin and piano, with Turman, Timothy Garland, violin, and Carlin Ma, piano. The piece is spare, almost ascetic, somewhat hard to assimilate for most ears, but the three gave it a well-considered performance.
