Mernier’s Blake
Songs is the very first work
of his that I have ever heard and one
that immediately caught my attention.
From then on, I was sure that he was
a composer whose music definitely appealed
and meant something to me. Actually,
half of the Blake Songs
were composed in 1992 and performed
during the 2003 Ars Musica festival
in Brussels by Mireille Capelle and
the ensemble Champ d’Action conducted
by Alain Franco. At that time, the cycle
consisted of To Winter, Infant
Joy and Mad Song. Three further
settings were added in 1994 and the
first song was revised.
The complete cycle
sets poems drawn from Poetical Sketches,
Songs of Innocence and Songs
of Experience, laid-out in a broadly
symmetrical structure. There are two
substantial outer sections (respectively
To Winter and Mad Song,
both from Poetical Sketches),
Nurse’s Song I and Infant
Joy (from Songs of Innocence)
and Infant Sorrow and Nurse’s
Song II (from Songs of Experience).
The complete cycle makes a remarkably
coherent whole, opening with a powerful
evocation of winter and ending with
an equally impressive dramatic, stormy
vision. The two poems from Songs
of Innocence - a light-footed Scherzo
and a relatively simple song - are strongly
counter-balanced by the two poems from
Songs of Experience, representing
the dark side of the human soul.
Though a comparatively
early work in Mernier’s output, Blake
Songs already displays a number
of this composer’s fingerprints, such
as a remarkable orchestral mastery and
a considerable feeling for dramatic
expression fully in tune with the words’
content.
These hallmarks are
found again, with increased mastery
and considerable refinement, in the
impressive Novalis setting An
die Nacht for soprano and orchestra.
This was completed almost ten years
later and first performed in Liège
in 2003. A repeat performance in 2004
led to the present recording. It is
a substantial large-scale setting in
which the orchestra plays such a considerable
part that it may be considered a tone
poem with voice rather than an orchestral
song. Harry Halbreich rightly suggests
as much in his excellent insert notes.
An die Nacht opens with
a long orchestral introduction setting
the scene in evocative, atmospheric
tones leading to the entry of the voice.
From then on, voice and orchestra will
behave as equal partners, the orchestra
evoking the moods suggested by the words
with almost endless imagination, invention
and subtlety. Though the music is instantly
recognisable as Mernier’s own, it often
reminds us that the composer was a pupil
of Philippe Boesmans, whose beautiful
Trakl-Lieder are often
brought to mind, though this does not
imply blunt imitation in any way, rather
some affinity in their search for strongly
expressive music. An die Nacht
is a marvellous piece of music and one
of Mernier’s finest achievements in
his present output.
The Piano Trio,
completed in 2003, was conceived as
a homage to Schumann’s Piano Trio
in D minor Op.63,
although the music neither directly
alludes to nor quotes from Schumann’s
work. As in the slightly earlier Upon
Teares (2002) for viol consort,
devised as a set of interludes around
Dowland’s Lachrimae, the
music functions as a reflection on the
older composer’s music. It is again
entirely personal and completely free
of slavish imitation, of pastiche or
parody. The Piano Trio is a concise
piece in three sections played without
a break. The introduction leads into
a static, bleak central section that,
in turn, leads straight into a final
section that attempts to achieve reconciliation.
That said the very end of the piece
remains ambiguous and does not offer
any real resolution.
Now in his early forties,
Benoît Mernier has proved himself
more than a promising young composer.
His substantial and varied output demonstrates
the breadth of his vision, his ability
to realise it with imagination and with
strongly expressive music. The vocal
works recorded here augur well of the
opera based on Wedekind’s The Awakening
of Spring on which Mernier is presently
at work.
This release is most
desirable in that it perfectly complements
Cyprès’s earlier recordings of
Mernier’s music (CYP 4612 and CYP 4613,
both of which I reviewed here some time
ago), both for the quality of the music
and for the excellence of the performances.
Hubert Culot
Other Mernier reviews
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2002/Sept02/mernier1.htm
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2002/Apr02/Mernier.htm
Laure Delcampe (soprano)a; Carmen Fuggiss
(soprano)c; Trio Fibonaccib;
Orchestre Philharmonique de Liègea;
Ensemble Modernc; Patrick Davina,
Peter Rundelc 
