Complete Songs

CHRISTOYANNIS COHEN

In the firmament of the French mélodie repertory, stars named Chausson, Duparc, Debussy, Fauré, Poulenc shine resplendent. Somewhere below this galaxy, an endearing personality has succeeded in carving himself a modest but indisputable niche in posterity: Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947). An emblematic figure of the Belle Époque, a link between Romanticism and the Anneés Folles, he was Marcel Proust’s lover and – above all – the composer of a handful of mélodies that have enjoyed undimmed success ever since: Si mes vers avaient des ailes, L’Heure exquise, D’une prison and À Chloris. Yet the disconcerting fact is that almost three-quarters of Hahn’s output for voice and piano have almost never been recorded (or recorded on such esoteric labels that they might as well not have been) when all mélodie specialists acknowledge his unquestioned talent in the field. This simple observation was the starting point of the Palazzetto Bru Zane’s project to record his complete mélodies for solo voice and piano, with the friendly cooperation of the baritone Tassis Christoyannis and his faithful acolyte, the pianist Jeff Cohen.

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