Maria Cristina Pantaleoni, Federico Longhi - Hahn, Gounod, Fauré, Massenet, Franck, Chaminade, Debussy, Tosti: Vie (2021)

The artistic cooperation of Federico Longhi (an internationally famous baritone) and Cristina Pantaleoni (a refined pianist and teacher of score analysis) has lasted for more than thirty years and originated, for both, in their first years as Conservatory students.
Vocal chamber music is a passion of many years for Federico Longhi, who is frequently engaged on stage in Verdi’s operas. Perhaps, his interest in chamber music is an innate consequence of his studies, under the guidance of such a master of the “scenic word” as was Giuseppe Valdengo. From him, Longhi learnt the indefatigable art of expressive research, applied with equal clarity of diction to both the Italian and the French language, thanks to Longhi’s bilingualism (he was born in Val d’Aosta).
Voice alone does not suffice for this music. The constant dialogue between singing and piano must translate into a union of intentions, which declines itself under the inspiring wing of a game of breaths, of continuous references to melody’s flow, and of a vocal itinerary born out of the common denominator of singing as a poetic intonation. This applies to the expression of feelings, of interior emotions, or of sensations elicited by the contemplation of nature.
This debut album comes as a consequence of years of cooperation and research realized by both artists in the repertoire of the Italian “romanza da salotto” and of the French Belle-Epoque mélodie. It is the duo’s natural landing in the recording studio after so many performances of these works, after digesting their secrets, or rather, finding their expressive soul.
This album is similar to the two faces of a coin, displaying the flowering of the chamber music song in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this itinerary, a collection of chosen works is displayed. As concerns Italian music, it comes from the best-known repertoire of works written by Francesco Paolo Tosti (Non t’amo più, Ideale, L’ultima canzone, La serenata, Malìa, Tristezza, Aprile, Sogno, ’A vucchella, Chanson de l’adieu, Chitarrata). As concerns the French repertoire it is composed by mélodies by Reynaldo Hahn (À Chloris and L’heure exquise), Charles Gounod (Le vallon and Où voulez vous aller?), Claude Debussy (Romance and Beau soir), Gabriel Fauré (Mai and Automne), Jules Massenet (Nuit d’Espagne), César Franck (Nocturne) and Cécile Chaminade (Sombrero).
These two worlds can live side by side if one is able to gather the different itineraries through which one gets to touch the expressive string binding them, i.e. that of melancholic nostalgia.
Francesco Paolo Tosti cooperated with Scapigliatura and Decadentism poets, among whom Gabriele D’Annunzio. He created musical gems with an entirely personal style in his quest of a synthesis between lyrics and music. This was close to an immediately communicative and Italianate melodic flight, belonging to a pathetic intonation strongly marked by the sentimental dimension with a bourgeois imprint. Born in Abruzzo, he studied with Saverio Mercadante at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella of Naples, where he graduated in violin and composition. Appreciated by Giuseppe Verdi, Tosti became a teacher of singing at the English court of Queen Victoria; he maintained this post also under her successor, Edward VII, who knighted him. Some of the best-known works among those recorded here display a depth and refinement in their harmonic choices and melodic inflections which are by no means inferior to that of the French works. However, they are not touched by the existential complications proper to the mélodies; for this reason, they are original and unique. This is a consequence of the composer’s choice to dedicate himself always and only to “salon” vocal music, caressed by his flowing melodic communicative immediacy. This represents a compendium of ars amatoria which was appreciated by both the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, and was never applied, as one could expect, to the world of opera.
Carmelo Errico wrote the lyrics recounting the end of a love in Non t’amo più (1884), but also those expressing the impossible wish for a loved person’s return in Ideale (1882), with a chaste and harmonious melody describing a yearned-for, almost contemplative love. Tosti sketched its very famous melody on the letterhead of the Savini restaurant of Milan. When Federico Longhi sings the words “Torna, caro ideal, torna un istante a sorridermi ancora”, with a softness veiled with crying emotion, beginning “torna” in mezzavoce, and later abandoning himself on the “a” of “ideal”, as if evoking the lost ideal with dreamy nostalgia, then one understands that this music has an expressive potential capable of going beyond melodic likeability, and of striking one’s emotionality. This was understood by D’Annunzio who, upon listening to this piece, defined it as “sospiro di melodia”, “melody’s sigh”.
We continue with L’ultima canzone (1905), on lyrics by Francesco Cimmino. Here a man is in despair because his beloved will soon marry another man. Then there is the rocking La serenata (1888), on lyrics by Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo, and Malìa (1887), on a poem by Rocco Emanuele Pagliara: here a lover wonders whether there is a love potion or an arcane power in the flower he was given. In the words by Neapolitan poet Riccardo Mazzola, for Tristezza (1908), there is a man who contemplates the sea with his beloved, and is seized by an inexplicable melancholy. In Aprile (1882), Rocco Emanuele Pagliara’s lines offer the image of spring’s awakening linked to love. Lorenzo Stecchetti, aka Olindo Guerrini, proposes in Sogno (1886) the rocking evocation of a love dream. In the extremely famous ’A vucchella (1907), brought to global success by the great Enrico Caruso, and set to music by Tosti with languid passion on D’Annunzio’s lyrics, the Vate poet accepts the challenge of the Neapolitan dialect. He plays with the title’s word, “the little mouth”, of which he would like to savour the kiss and the flavour; a mouth likened to a slightly withered rose.
The lyrics by French poet Edmond Haraucourt, for Chanson de l’adieu (1898) express the feeling of leaving intended as a small loss of what one loves (“partir c’est mourir un peu”); the words by Riccardo Mazzola for Chitarrata (1909), excerpted from romances from Abruzzo, are the background for yet another serenade with a melancholic flavour, dedicated to an only-dreamed-of woman.

The French composers of the end of the nineteenth century were frequently in touch with the poètes maudits (the cooperation between composers such as Hahn and Fauré and Paul Verlaine was paradigmatic). The melancholic line, even when it is marked by a penetrating sensuousness (see Nuit d’Espagne by Massenet) or by the vaporous traits of a singing stifled by tears, bends itself, rather than on the wings of song, on a sighing delicacy, on the soul’s whisper, on the photograph of interiority. This is never externally expressed, yet it is capable of transmitting, with its melodies focused on the word, the deep feeling substantiating these pages. They are wrapped in a heaven of perfect beauty, among glares of light charged with hope and disquieting depressive shadows.
We move therefore to Gounod, whose mélodie Où voulez vous aller? (1839) on lyrics by Théophile Gautier, with its barcarolle tempo, has a captivating fascination, through which, in the seducer’s extravagant promises, a young girl is invited to travel; whilst the song on Alphonse de Lamartine’s lines, Le vallon (1840) is veined by melancholic memories. Here a heart tired of everything, even of hope, seeks a serene asylum in the valleys of childhood. There one can repose and breathe the last breath of life awaiting death, and then plunge in the flow of nature which, undaunted, continues its course.
From the atmospheres of composers with an operatic calling such as Gounod or Massenet (who, in Nuit d’Espagne [1869] on lyrics by Louis Gallet, employs folklike harmonies to mirror a Spain-inspired fascination and sensuousness in a night of love) we move on to Claude Debussy. His two mélodies on lyrics by Paul Bourget are Romance (1891), describing an exhausted and suffering soul (“l’âme évaporée et souffrante”), dispersed in the memory of the lilies’ lost perfume as a loving remembrance, and Beau soir (1880), whose light melody offers us the image of a beautiful evening. Here the rivers are tinged with the rosy nuance of sunset, and the wheat fields are moved by a warm breeze: one should enjoy this beauty as long as one is young and evenings seem beautiful, before the river’s waves flow into the sea and we go to our tomb.
We then listen to pages by Gabriel Fauré, a composer who made of the mélodie the heart of his output, pouring elegance and harmonic refinement in it. His works recall interior suggestions inspired by the seasons: in Mai (ca. 1862), on lyrics by Victor Hugo, he evokes the blossoming of spring flowers, while in Automne (1878), on words by Paul Armand Silvestre, he speaks of nostalgic regrets full of melancholy.
In Nocturne (1884) by César Franck, the protagonist of Louis de Fourcaud’s lines is the image of night’s fresh transparency, with its stars and silence; it is ideal for being embraced under its wing in the rocking serenity of slumber.
We then listen to L’heure exquise by Reynaldo Hahn, a singular figure – Venezuelan-born, later naturalized as a French composer. He was a paradigmatic character of the Parisian Belle Epoque and a close friend of Marcel Proust, with whom he also had a sentimental relationship. L’heure exquise is the fifth of the seven Chansons grises (composed between 1887 and 1890), freely inspired by poems by Paul Verlaine. It is an invitation to love under moonlight: the moon, white and luminous, favours the lovers’ encounter in an embrace of silent intimacy. Then we find his most famous mélodie, À Chloris (1913) on lyrics by Théophile de Viau, a French libertine poet who lived under the rule of Louis XIII. It is taken as a model and as a paradigm of the French Impressionist taste which still feels the influence of the dying late romanticism. It requires from the voice a “recited” singing style, expressing a languid declaration of love: “if it is true, O Chloris, that you love me – and I feel that you do love me – I believe that not even the kings have a joy such as mine…”. The piece expertly manages to find a balance between a whispered confidence and the words declared with the grace of an old-fashioned conversation. This is enhanced by the use of a melodic line recalling Bachian suggestions.
Finally, we find Sombrero (1894) by Cécile Chaminade, a singular figure of female pianist and composer. Indeed, she was the first female composer to receive, in 1913, the French Légion d’honneur. In this extravagant piece, both witty and delightful, the lines by Edouard Guinand describe a young girl mocked because she wears a sombrero to attract men.

These two worlds, the Italian and the French, are dissimilar but complementary in their musical portrayal of nostalgia. The voice by Federico Longhi, soft, flexible and rich of a rainbow of colours and chiaroscuros, constantly striving in order to transmit meaning to sound starting from the word, and the delicate, sensitive and caressing, but also luminous piano touch by Cristina Pantaleoni, in a perfect syntony of artistic purposes, manage to convey an impression of these two worlds. Starting from their artistic awareness about the works they perform, these become poems clad in notes.