There’s some wonderfully ardent singing on this CD, and some compelling passages of vocal color and shading. Christine Schäfer is an intelligent singer who understands that singing in French is not about French but rather about la nuance et l’effet de la musique, which composers such as Debussy and Chausson also know something about; it’s written into every note. I mention this because for some reason French has a way of seducing many singers into obsessing about getting the language right–it’s one of those “impress your friends” things–to the detriment of the music and the distraction and annoyance of listeners. Of course there’s French music and there’s French music, and on this program we hear both how similar and how very different the styles of even two contemporaries (and friends) can be. Schäfer is much more assured technically and interpretively in the early Chausson songs–but the performance standard is acceptably high throughout the program, and there are many highlights.
Schäfer’s vibrato tends to be uneven, especially at louder dynamic levels, and so in these places the pitch has an untrue quality. She deftly handles the very difficult leap at the end of Chausson’s “Sérénade” from Op. 13, and masterfully colors the subtle atmosphere of the same composer’s beautiful “Le temps des lilas”. Her renditions of two songs from Chausson’s Op. 2, “Hébé” and “Le Calibri”, are sheer pleasure. But she’s far less deft in making her way through the dense, often thorny vegetation of Debussy’s “De fleurs” and “De soir”, from Proses lyriques. A bonus is Schäfer’s performance of two Chausson duets with mezzo Stella Doufexis–two delightful pieces, very well sung, that deserve to be heard more. Pianist Irwin Gage artfully washes and fills and illuminates the musical canvas with his own array of keyboard chroma, but his instrument is placed in such an unfavorably distant, indistinct acoustic that much of the essential interplay of sound between voice and piano is rendered meaningless. It sounds as if Schäfer is at the front of a stage and Gage and his piano are at the opposite, deepest corner. Wasn’t anyone listening?
