Hahn, R: Dans la nuit

“It all began with Berlioz' Nuits d’été. The first time I sang this cycle I was struck by the power yet gentleness that these pieces emanate. Berlioz originally composed his work for voice and piano and I decided to champion that version for the fine chamber relationship it permits. We have aimed to convey all the intimacy of these songs, attempting extreme dynamics, passages almost in recitative, while retaining the lyricism of Berlioz's work. The next step was to find more treasures with a similar nocturnal setting. So Johanne Ralambondrainy and I, who have long been accomplices, went through the collections, discovering or rediscovering songs that appealed to us, then whittling those down to the ones we felt were absolutely essential. In some cases we have taken the liberty of removing mélodies from the cycle to which they normally belong. We have thus brought together composers we love and mélodies we find exciting and original… Finally, I asked Christian Pageault, an actor I particularly appreciate for his precision and dramatic intensity, to join me as narrator, reciting some parts of the poems. The texts you will hear were with me constantly as an inspiration throughout the conception and realisation of this project.” Isabelle Druet

Few instruments are as adept as the clarinet at imitating the sound of the human voice in its whole range of vocal expression. This has been especially true since the Romantic period: time and again composers have had recourse to the clarinet whenever they wanted to evoke an emotional – but unsentimental – mood or to create the sort of atmosphere of dreamy otherworldliness that is associated with the hours of twilight: here one thinks especially of Carl Maria von Weber in Germany and of Berlioz in France. Nicola Jürgensen goes a step further – “into the night” – in her present programme, Dans la nuit, which takes its title from a song by Reynaldo Hahn. The clarinettist, who has appeared as a soloist with many leading European orchestras, while also making a name for herself as a chamber recitalist at international music festivals such as Risør and Lockenhaus, has adapted these 19th- and early 20th-century French works for her instrument and recorded them with the pianist Matthias Kirschnereit. Well-known and lesser-known songs by Berlioz, Hahn, Fauré and Poulenc feature here alongside more dramatic and virtuoso pieces. The result of this unexpected instrumental union is a living impression of the Paris salons of the belle époque, captured in stylish interpretations. Who would have thought that Saint-Saëns’s 'Introduction et Rondo capriccioso' could sound as brilliantly effective on the clarinet as it does in its original version for the violin? Nicola Jürgensen has garnered equally enthusiastic reviews for her work in the world of the modern music theatre – she has already been heard onstage as Eva in Stockhausen’s 'Michaels Reise um die Erde' at the Vienna Festival and in other leading centres of music. François Borne’s 'Fantaisie brillante on themes from Bizet’s Carmen' is a cleverly compiled potpourri that maintains the drama of its source and holds its own even when compared with the original version for flute, at least as interpreted here by Nicola Jürgensen. A further operatic melody originally scored for the violin is the famous “Méditation” from Massenet’s opera 'Thaïs', which rounds off an outstanding release on a note of mellifluous inwardness.