Voyages with Mary Bevan

As a lover of French mélodies, I invested in a new CD featuring the English soprano Mary Bevan, with Joseph Middleton at the piano. The CD, “Voyages” takes as its theme the longing to depart for distant and imagined lands. Ms Bevan has a lovely voice, and sings with welcome vivacity. Juxtaposing four German-language songs (Schubert) to the French compilation may make intellectual sense, but the inter-mingling of early nineteenth century German Lieder with late nineteenth century French mélodies sits somewhat uneasily on the musical logic. One can see the logic in a compilation of Voyages to hoped-for lands of connecting Goethe's texts to the Baudelaire texts of the French songs. But there is not too much musical logic.

French is a difficult language for the non-French, and on occasions Ms Bevan sounds more at home in the four German-language songs (Schubert) than in the fifteen French-language songs. Her German is clear, but her French can be a bit mumbled on occasions. French, however, is a difficult language for singers (even French singers); German and Italian are much more singer-friendly. I enjoyed making the acquaintance of Emmanuel Chabrier's setting of Baudelaire's L'invitation au voyage, with its unexpected obbligato bassoon added to the piano accompaniment. The Duparc setting is, of course, much more familiar. I also enjoyed the two songs by the 19^th century Parisian cabaret poet, Maurice Rollinat; his setting of Le jet d'eau is quite haunting. Throughout the recital Joseph Middleton is his usual tower of strength. Good balance between voice and piano.

For the next few years, I think I probably have enough collections of French mélodies. I cannot even recall all the ones I have. Time to diverse into Haydn baryton trios, or Scarlatti sonatas, or whatever.