In creating a universe heavy with intangible meaning, it is ripe for music–and not least for Chausson’s music, at once sumptuous and exquisite, and pounding with memories. Emotions are clearly the subject matter, but they are rarely reported directly instead the central persona’s sensibility has bloomed out into the sights, sounds and scents of the world around him. Lilacs feature in both the poems Chausson chose here, together with other heady images: the sea, the sky, dead leaves blowing in the wind, the moon. Chausson found his words in a youthful collection of poems by his friend and contemporary Maurice Bouchor, whose lines he also set in several songs–including “Le Temps des lilas,” a transcription of the present work’s ending. The beginnings of the Poème de l’amour et de la mer (Poem of Love and the Sea) go back to 1882, when the composer was still having lessons with Franck, but the work was not completed until 1890, alongside the Symphony in B flat. As he knew, a sunset has its own power, even majesty, and there are radiant reflections of the Wagnerian afterglow in this evening’s Chausson score, as in those by Dukas and Magnard to follow. “A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.” This was Debussy’s mature assessment of Wagner, and of the French passion for Wagner that he himself had once felt. Written for the concert Pioneering Influence: César Franck, performed on at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Ernest Chausson, Poeme de l’amour et de la mer, Op.19
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December 2022
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