Claire Booth & Andrew Matthew-Owens: Paris 1913: L'Offrande lyrique
Nimbus Alliance

Any time is a great time to be in Paris, but as British soprano Claire Booth and Welsh-born pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen make clear 1913 would have been an especially terrific time to be in the city. In the pre-WWI era, the art song idiom was aburst with imagination and vitality, as shown by the material the composers on this collection produced that year. The recital partners have fashioned an encompassing set featuring pieces, naturally, by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, and Erik Satie; Booth and Matthews-Owen have augmented those works, however, with ones by Lili Boulanger, Reynaldo Hahn, Georges Auric, Cécile Chaminade, Darius Milhaud, Gabriel Grovlez, and others, making for a diverse presentation that rewards many times over. With Paris 1913: L'Offrande lyrique, the duo has crafted a fine sequel to 2019's well-received Songs and Vexations, which also included material by Debussy, Fauré, and Satie.

While Debussy was represented by Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire on Songs and Vexations, his Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé graces the new collection. What makes the work's inclusion all the more fascinating is that it's joined by a setting of the same material by Ravel, a move that understandably invites comparison between their respective treatments. Interestingly, the composers both set music to two of the French symbolist poet's texts (“Soupir” and “Placet futile”) but diverged on the third (Ravel selecting “Surgi de la croupe et du bond” and Debussy “Eventail”); as noteworthy is the fact that while Ravel, who first secured the rights to set Mallarmé's texts to music, scored his chamber ensemble treatment for string quartet, two flutes, two clarinets, and piano, the arrangement that appears here is Stravinsky's arrangement for piano. Enhancing the value of the release is the inclusion of the world première recording of Guy Ropartz's “La Route” and even more importantly the world première recording and performance of Louis Durey's L'Offrande lyrique, six songs set to texts by Rabindranath Tagore in French translation by André Gide.

Booth's repertoire extends from Monteverdi and Handel to Berg, Strauss, and Schoenberg, but her voice suits the lyrical material on this recording particularly well. Having her long-time friend and collaborator Matthews-Owen, who studied at London's Royal Academy of Music and has established himself as one of the foremost vocal accompanists of our time, by her side brings out the best in this superb vocal artist. With its lush vibrato and pristine articulation, Booth's songbird-like voice is inarguably one of the release's major attractions, so much so that the coupling of her singing and the composers' songs feels like a match made in heaven. The moments where her singing captivates are far too numerous to mention, though her sublime renderings of Hahn's “À Chloris” and Ravel's “Soupir” are representative of the artistry on display. Her reading of the opening line in Ropartz ‘s “La Route,” “Au grand soleil, sur la route blanche,” is indicative of her arresting execution. Every line is meticulously considered in order to determine its optimal presentation.

Setting the tone is André Caplet's incandescent “En regardant ces belles fleurs,” which plunges us into the verdant centre of the French city. Booth immediately imposes herself on the recording with a soaring, authoritative vocal, as does her partner with accompaniment that sparkles as it matches her every move. After Milhaud's “L'innocence” exudes a serene glow, Hahn's “À Chloris” enraptures with the beauty of its dignified melodies and Booth's gorgeous, pitch-perfect delivery. Elsewhere, there's playful theatricality (Auric's “Le pouf”), romantic ecstasy (Fauré's “Il m'est cher, Amour, le bandeau”), and rhapsodic splendour (Boulanger's “Vous m'avez regardé avec toute votre âme”).

While the recitalists deliver a terrific performance of Ravel's Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, the most surprising thing about the work is the way its third song, “Surgi de la croupe et du bond,” exchanges the tonal lyricism of the first two songs with something verging on cryptic, Schoenberg-inflected modernism. Debussy's own treatment is emblematic of the composer in the best sense of the word, the songs dreamily aromatic, evocative, and languorous and guaranteed to enchant admirers of Pelléas et Mélisande and other works. Satie's also represented by a three-part work, Trois poèmes d'Amour, with each part a delectable miniature lasting no more than a minute at a time.

One of the set's most noteworthy pieces is Durey's L'Offrande lyrique, its selection as the album title consistent with that. The self-taught composer, who was inspired to dedicate himself to music after hearing Pelléas et Mélisande when he was nineteen, would later become a member of Les Six. The style of L'Offrande lyrique is less Debussy-esque, however, but instead more indebted to Schoenberg and specifically the atonal writing of The Book of Hanging Gardens. Often cited as the first piece of free twelve-note technique in French music, the six-song set beguiles as it explores moods raining from wistful (“Au petit matin”) to forlorn (“Les nuages s'entassent”) and resplendent (“Lumière ! ma lumière !”). Its harmonic adventurousness aside, L'Offrande lyrique nonetheless locates itself comfortably within the French tradition as otherwise accounted for on the release.

January 2025