Search - Reynaldo Hahn :: Reynaldo Hahn: The Complete Recordings

A literally unique musical experience

Charlus | NYC | 12/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Venezuelan-born Reynaldo Hahn was taken to Paris at age 3, and became, early enough (his most famous song, Si mes vers avaient des ailes, was composed when he was 12!) a steady feature in the musical life of France. At the Paris Conservatoire he was a pupil of Massenet. (His mother, née de Echenagucia, was a Venezuelan beauty; his father, Hermann Hahn, was German-born and said to be of Jewish origin. If so, Reynaldo remained undisturbed in Paris and Cannes during the Nazi occupation, although his music was forbidden. His family vault at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris displays all the Christian symbols, whatever that may imply.)



Lover of Marcel Proust (who included Hahn in Rembrance of Things Past,) sought-after musical entertainer in the salons of the Highest Society, Member of the Institut de France, diarist, composer, singer, renowned conductor (specialising in Mozart, he conducted the earliest performances at the Salzburg festival, at the invitation of Lilly Lehmann,) influential music writer in the most powerful daily in France (Le Figaro,) music director of the Casino at Cannes, finally surintendant of the Opéra Comique before dying of a brain tumor in 1947, Hahn was a multi-faceted musician of the highest probity. His songs are simple, patrician, utterly elegant and always set to the best poetry. His simplicity and purity of means accomplish in little what many pretentious thunderers fail even to approximate. His instrumental music is being increasingly heard as well (see: Earl WILD.)



Hahn himself had a light baritone voice, a little croak of a voice really, which became his entrée into high society drawing rooms before the First World War: a voice that charmed duchesses and made the most reserved princesses smile. He even made some 50 records between 1920 and 1930, which show his unique, expressive musicality, unfailing sense of phrasing, elegance of style, and fine piano-playing (He almost invariably accompanies himself.) The most remarquable wistful quality suffused his singing, truly of the chamber, of the drawing room, the most intimate, insinuating art. Try, as an ineffable example mentioned in many Belle Epoque diaries, his legendary interpretation of Gounod's Maid of Athens (poem by lord Byron.) If Saint-Simon could sing, he would sing like Reynaldo.



This collection includes some incredibly rare Hahn items, all in superb re-masterings by Ward Marston and supplemented by interpretations from the incomparable Ninon Vallin (a couple with Reynaldo himself at the piano) as well as Hahn accompanying the handsome and elegant American baritone Arthur Endrèze (a great figure in Paris in the 20s and 30s) and the tenor Guy Ferrant, Reynaldo's partner after 1940, who committed suicide shortly after Hahn's death. (Those were more romantic days!)



Ward Marston and Romophone are to be warmly and admiringly commended on this superb contribution.

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