Debussy, Messiaen: Extase (Pentatone)
★★★★☆
There is a line of beauty that runs through French vocal music, from Debussy to Messiaen to Boulez, which exists to the exclusion of all else. When you listen, it sounds as if no other French songs exist — no Ravel, no Poulenc, no Jacques Brel — nothing but this ethereal space in which each consonant is placed with aesthetic precision, like raspberries in a patisserie, or boules in a town square.
Singing in this genre can sound precious and showy. Not on this album, however.
Madalena Kozena speaks Czech as mother tongue, English and German at home. While her recital French is flawless, what she brings to Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis is an unexpected touch of Janacek in the night — that inimitable dark zone between singing and speaking that turns a chanson into overheard dialogue on an intercity train. It is particularly effective in two sets of poems by Baudelaire and Verlaine, gossipy, intimate and more than a little disreputable.
Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi are chaste, full of Church and Christ, and rather grey by way of tonal colour. They were written for his first wife in the mid-1930s around the time of their marriage. Kozena sounds virginal, freed from impure thoughts. Mitsuko Uchida’s pianism, jewelled as a wedding gown, promises bliss at the end of the bower. The mutual intuition is immaculate. At no point can you tell which of them, pianist or singer, anticipates the other. It is perfect communion.
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