CDA67141/2 - Disc 1 Track 1 - Si mes vers avaient des ailes

Si mes vers avaient des ailes

First line:

Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles

composer

Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947)

1888; dedicated to the composer's sister Maria

author of text

Recordings

Hahn: Chamber Music
Room-Music

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CDH55379 Helios (Hyperion's budget label) Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available

Hahn: Chansons grises & other songs
Martyn Hill (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

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CDH55040 Helios (Hyperion's budget label)

Hahn: Songs
Graham Johnson (piano)

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CDA67141/2 2CDs

The Essential Hyperion 2

HYP20 2CDs Super-budget price sampler — 2CDs Deleted

Details

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 1 on CDA67141/2 CD1 [2'11] 2CDs Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Sacem/United Music Publishers/Reynaldo Hahn
FrançaisEnglish

Martyn Hill (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 10 on CDH55040 [2'11] Helios (Hyperion's budget label) Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Sacem/United Music Publishers/Reynaldo Hahn
FrançaisEnglish

Room-Music, Philip De Groote (cello), Stephen Coombs (piano)

Track 11 on CDH55379 [1'53] Helios (Hyperion's budget label) Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Sacem/UMP
EnglishFrançaisDeutsch

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 13 on HYP20 CD2 [2'11] 2CDs Super-budget price sampler — 2CDs Deleted Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Sacem/United Music Publishers/Reynaldo Hahn
FrançaisEnglish

Si mes vers avaient des ailes

Like every other French song composer of the time, Reynaldo was drawn to the poetry of Victor Hugo who relished the use of the most epic canvases both in his poetry and his novels. Like Goethe, Hugo was capable of small and unpretentious lyrics of the greatest tenderness, and his importance in the development of the mélodie cannot be over-estimated. Although Hahn placed Si mes vers avaient des ailes as the second item in his first recueil, it has become his motto song. The youthfulness of the composer (he was thirteen) makes its perfection seem all the more extraordinary. The distinguishing marks of Hahn’s style are all there: an accompaniment which undulates in the background like the slow unfurling of a skein of sumptuous material, a background of seemingly little import which nevertheless shapes the melody as if the accompanist wielded the lightest of hands on a potter’s wheel; a vocal line which is derived from the intimacy of speech but which contains in it the seeds of a wonderful melody truly to be sung; the use of unexpected intervals and cadences (the leaps are sometimes large) which transport us suddenly from a conversational tone in the middle of the stave to the swoon-inducing delight of a cunningly placed mezza voce. Right from the beginning Hahn was writing for singers who could cast sensual spells. Although the composer’s debts to Massenet are obvious, this music has a depth of feeling which that composer was seldom to attain in his songs.

Track-specific metadata

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Details for CDA67141/2 disc 1 track 1

Artists

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)

Graham Johnson (piano)

ISRC

GB-AJY-96-14101

Duration

2'11

Recording date

22 December 1995

Recording venue

Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom

Recording producer

Mark Brown & Arthur Johnson

Recording engineer

Antony Howell & Julian Millard

Hyperion usage

Hahn: Songs (CDA67141/2)
Disc 1 Track 1
Release date: June 1996
2CDs
The Essential Hyperion 2 (HYP20)
Disc 2 Track 13
Release date: October 2000
Deletion date: October 2010
2CDs Super-budget price sampler — 2CDs Deleted

Hyperion Records