The programme of this recital by Lore Binon and Inge Spinette fits perfectly within the theme of the Leuven music festival that wants to build a bridge between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the same time it confirms the attention of Festival 20/21 to quality performers. For a better duo for these songs about fragile love, dreamy sadness and melancholy is hardly conceivable.
The cd with this programme (released at Fuga Libera – KC review, December 2017) was awarded a Golden Label by Klassiek Centraal, which was presented on the occasion of this concert in the Sint-Geertruikerk in Leuven. We could be pleased with this award once more, because the live performance confirmed the atmospheric and extremely subtle approach of the duo. In their very careful selection, Lore Binon and Inge Spinette not only chose songs composed by Debussy and Reynaldo Hahn from the collection Les poètes maudits, in which Paul Verlaine gathered poems by himself and by like-minded poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé. They also boldly combined these with songs from the elegiac and contemplative cycle Apparition, which contemporary composer George Crumb composed in 1979. Hushed songs about death, which wonderfully connect with the symbolist themes of the songs from the French fin de siècle.
Lore Binon is an ideal performer for this kind of repertoire. We have already experienced her as a delightful Mélisande in the production Impressions de Pelléas by Marius Constant (produced in the previous edition of what was then called Transit Festival Leuven, and subsequently performed in other places – KC review, August 2018). She simply looks like the frail woman who fits this kind of music, and moreover she chooses a carefully considered outfit for it. But above all: with gossamer threads of her soft-timbred voice, Binon takes you into the otherworldly net of this poetry. Delicate and dizzyingly refined, she sings the subtle melodies, smooth and sensual, without losing expressiveness and eloquence. The fact that the diction does not make every word clearly audible becomes secondary, because the listener lets himself drift on the sounds of word and piano.
Inge Spinette is excellently familiar with the voice. She is a particularly sensitive and text-conscious pianist, and accompanies the singer with velvet fingers and unwavering attention. A few solo pieces – seamlessly woven into the recital – are pure taste-makers of both melancholy and refinement. Moreover, for the pieces by George Crumb, she switches from a 19th-century Steinway to the modern, amplified piano. An illustration of stylistic awareness.
A beautiful concert. But is this type of church really the right place for such a refined programme that requires detailed listening …?
- WHAT: Verdoemde dichters. Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, George Crumb
- WHO: Lore Binon (vocals) & Inge Spinette (piano)
- WHERE: Sint-Geertruikerk, Leuven
- WHEN: Thursday 27 September 2018
- AS PART OF: Festival 20/21 (website)