He is not as famous as his good friend Marcel Proust, who was presumably his lover. Regardless, Reynaldo Hahn's music is well-made and pleasant to listen to. Take just the first song, À Chloris: a fine Bach pastiche à la Cent Mille Chansons, performed here in an arrangement for tenor and string quartet. Hahn's music suited the fashionable Parisian salons of around 1900,
Debussy was actually already
… too modern for him. He was born in Venezuela in 1874. His ancestors were part Venezuelan-Spanish, German and Jewish. At almost the age of four, he and his family moved to Paris. Here he felt at home, although the Dreyfus affair hurt him deeply. His gentle music reflects little of the conflict. Even a late work like the Piano Quartet (1946) exudes the atmosphere of orchids and fragrant honeysuckle. And that's even though Hahn had to flee to Monaco during World War II to escape persecution. After his death in 1947, his music was quickly forgotten. Starting in the 1970s, after the demise of the postwar avant-garde, Hahn's music came back into focus. The rise of the CD will also have helped bridge the gap between Hahn's time and our own. This album contains two chamber works for piano and strings and six songs. For the occasion, the piano accompaniments to the songs have been replaced by arrangements for strings or piano quintet.more
