Hillary Hahn plays a precious Poem for the violin

How does a chant to melancholy sound like?

French composer Ernest Chausson offers a potential answer with his Poème, a work for violin and orchestra. Considered by many as his most beloved and performed oeuvre, this piece is concise, delicate and heartwarming. A student of Massenet and Franck, Chausson was a composer who thrived in the salon atmosphere of Paris’ fin de siècle. And while he was respected amongst his colleagues, from which Debussy’s high praise definitely stands out, he was not considered a composer per se, since his interests in painting, travelling and living well took plenty of his energy and time. Chausson was initially asked by Eugène Ysaÿe to compose a Violin Concerto, but he felt too intimidated by the task. Instead, he promised to write a “shorter work. It will be in very free form with several passages in which the violin plays alone.” The result was finally titled Poème after many changes. It is rhapsodic at times and it comes and goes through different moods. Overall, the piece exudes a certain sadness, eloquent of its composer’s own emotional turmoils. (Chausson died at the age of 44 from an accident riding his bike, and it has been long rumored that suicide was it cause.) While Poème has been recorded many times, Deutsche Grammophon has recently released a magnificent version in Paris, with Hillary Hahn as the soloist and Mikko Frank at the helm of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Hahn’s virtuosic feats are on full display in this recording, her playing is both subtle and refined, which suits appropriately with the Frenchness of this music. Additionally, Franck’s command of balance might be this album’s strongest feature. Franck has been able to manage the orchestra’s dynamic range and its plethora of textures that pays respect to the work’s accentuations. This Finnish composer has excelled at assigning the preponderant roles to both soloist and orchestra where they truly need it. I have found this new version of Poème remarkably exquisite in the sense that accentuates the aesthetic and emotional properties of this gorgeous piece of music, one that makes us wonder why Chausson didn’t make more music.