BaL 16.11.24 - Berlioz: Les nuits d'été

[Pulcinella]

1500
Building a Library

Flora Willson selects her favourite version of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été

Presto listing here:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/works/33556--berlioz-les-nuits-dete-op-7/browse

Recommended version:
Jessye Norman (soprano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis
Philips 4124932

[Pulcinella]

The two classic performances on the shelves here:
Crespin/SRO/Ansermet
Baker/NPO/Barbirolli
but also a hybrid:
Yvonne Minton, Stuart Burrows/BBCSO/Boulez

The BBC MM offering (Volume 8, Number 8) is
Katarina Karnéus/BBCPO/Vassily Sinaisky
(New Broadcasting House, Manchester, June 1999)

[DoctorT]

Personally I find the Karneus BBCMM version hard to beat. Sadly won’t feature in BaL

[mikealdren]

Seems no time since it was last on, how time flies, a decade ago.....

[Barbirollians]

Oh heavens Flora Willson - another one to miss. Baker/Barbirolli for me with Crespin , Lorraine Hunt and Eleanor Steber runners up.

[HighlandDougie]

Véronique Gens, x 2. 10 years difference between recordings which, unsurprisingly, reflect how her voice had matured. Impeccable (en Français). Or, to use a current French cliché - "Nickel!". IMUO.

[smittims]

This is another work I used to listen to a lot but tired of and hardly ever hear it today. One version I rediscovered and found good is by Victoria de los Angeles and Charles Munch, from 1955. It's in what someone described as the 'Munch brick' (I'd say more of a brieze block) .

An unusual recording was the 1969 Philips / Colin Davis where they used four separate voices , claiming this was Berlioz' original intention. John Shirley-Quirk in Sur les lagunes was especially memorable.

[MickyD]

I've always liked the Brigitte Balleys version with Philippe Herreweghe.

[Wolfram]

This is another work I used to listen to a lot but tired of and hardly ever hear it today. One version I rediscovered and found good is by Victoria de los Angeles and Charles Munch, from 1955. It's in what someone described as the 'Munch brick' (I'd say more of a brieze block) .

An unusual recording was the 1969 Philips / Colin Davis where they used four separate voices , claiming this was Berlioz' original intention. John Shirley-Quirk in Sur les lagunes was especially memorable.

JEG also employed four different singers in his recording.

[Darloboy]

Previous BaL recommendations:

Bernard Keeffe (April 77): Baker/Barbirolli

Roger Nichols (May 95): de los Angeles/Munch + Baker/Barbirolli as mid-price single-CD choice (de los Angeles was only available on a 2-CD set with Roméo et Juliette at the time) + Hendricks/Colin Davis as modern recording choice

Christopher Cook (Jan 14): Brigitte Balleys/Herreweghe. I made a note that the reviewer mentioned Crespin/Ansermet as a soprano version and the Philips LSO/Davis recording as a mixed voice version

The programme has only covered Les nuits d'été on one other occasion - in February 1983, when John Steane was the reviewer. Unfortunately I don't know what he recommended (although it wouldn't surprise me if it was Baker/Barbirolli).

Le spectre de la rose has to be one of my all-time favourite pieces of music, although like smittims I don't listen to it often these days.

Ah, I almost forgot - Jeremy Sams did a BaL programme on his favourite Berlioz recordings back in February 2019 when he picked Les nuits d'été sung by Véronique Gens conducted by Louis Langrée as one of his choices.

[pastoralguy]

An unbelievably uninteresting piece for the orchestra! Not quite in the Chopin Piano Concerto class but definitely close!

[oliver sudden]

This is another work I used to listen to a lot but tired of and hardly ever hear it today. One version I rediscovered and found good is by Victoria de los Angeles and Charles Munch, from 1955. It's in what someone described as the 'Munch brick' (I'd say more of a brieze block) .

An unusual recording was the 1969 Philips / Colin Davis where they used four separate voices , claiming this was Berlioz' original intention. John Shirley-Quirk in Sur les lagunes was especially memorable.

If I understand correctly, Berlioz didn’t do the orchestrations as a set but in various transpositions for different voice types. So if for example a high voice sings the lot, some have to be transposed back up to the key of the piano version.

[Pulcinella]

If I understand correctly, Berlioz didn’t do the orchestrations as a set but in various transpositions for different voice types. So if for example a high voice sings the lot, some have to be transposed back up to the key of the piano version.

This is taken from the Wiki article:

For the orchestral version, Berlioz transposed the second and third songs to lower keys. When this version was published, Berlioz specified different voices for the various songs: mezzo-soprano or tenor for "Villanelle", contralto for "Le spectre de la rose", baritone (or optionally contralto or mezzo) for "Sur les lagunes", mezzo or tenor for "Absence", tenor for "Au cimetière", and mezzo or tenor for "L'île inconnue".The cycle is nevertheless usually sung by a single soloist, most often a soprano or mezzo-soprano. When the cycle is sung by sopranos the second and third songs are usually transposed back to their original pitches; when lower voices sing the cycle some other songs are often transposed downwards; in the view of the Berlioz scholar Julian Rushton this has a particularly deleterious effect in the first song, the lighthearted "Villanelle".

The full article is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_nuits_d'été

[mikealdren]

Yes, Janet Baker's versions with Barbirolli and Hickox are in very different keys.

[smittims]

Like many mezzos ex-contraltos (Ferrier was a good example) Janet was afraid of high notes , until Ray Leppard encouraged her to do them in their Handel and Haydn discs, which are still worth hearing.

I still wish I hadn't said to Alfreda Hodgson when I saw her with a vocal score of Gurrelieder 'Are you ready for the top B flat?'.
She looked horrified and said 'there isn't one, is there?' I'm ashamed to say I had to struggle to make encouraging noises.

Needess to say, it was 'alright on the night'.

.