“Live at the BBC Proms: the Quatuor Van Kuijk join baritone James Atkinson and pianist Michael Pandya for a chamber concert that nods to fin de siècle Paris, featuring Debussy’s String Quartet, Fauré’s exquisite song cycle La bonne chanson and Holmès’s Les heures.”
Augusta Holmès
Les Heures’
Claude Debussy
String Quartet in G minor
Gabriel Fauré
La bonne chanson
“Step into fin de siècle Paris, where the poet Verlaine, the painter Monet and the composers Fauré and Debussy would meet at regular soirées. From Verlaine, Fauré took nine poems to set as his exquisite cycle La bonne chanson – a serene depiction of the love Fauré was currently experiencing for Debussy’s future wife. Debussy’s own String Quartet was finished while Fauré’s work was still in progress, and proved one of the composer’s first ventures into his new, luxuriant musical world of light, sensuality and fragile beauty. The concert opens with a work by Augusta Holmès, one of the many 19th-century French women composers now being rediscovered. Her intimate song cycle Les heures contemplates the ‘hours’ of the day.”