Alan Gilbert leads an excellent account of Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher – Seen and Heard Worldwide

Germany Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher: Soloists, Vokalhelden Kids’s Choir (administrators: Johannes David Wolff, Judith Kamphues), MDR Radio Refrain (director: Philipp Ahmann), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Alan Gilbert (conductor). Philharmonie Berlin, 8.6.2024. (MB)

Jeanne d’Arc (spoken) – Marion Cotillard
Brother Dominique (spoken) – Eric Génovèse
Narrator (spoken) – Christian Ganon
La Vierge – Elsa Benoit
St Marguerite – Adèle Charvet
St Catherine – Anna Kissjudit
Porcus, Voice / First Herald / Priest – Valentyn Dytiuk
Voice / Second Herald / Peasant – Alex Rosen

Stage path – Côme de Bellescize
Manufacturing – Ony Sarfati
Costumes, Stage tools – Colombe Lauriot Prévost
Lighting – Thomas Costerg

Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher is an uncommon work, seldom encountered in efficiency, although its length at about seventy-five minutes makes it good for each live performance and CD. It’s typically classed as an oratorio, however the designation mystère lyrique arguably makes higher sense, bringing it nearer to a thriller play and reminding us that the work, with spoken dialogue and three central spoken roles, is no less than as a lot Paul Claudel’s as Honegger’s. It has been totally staged, even filmed; right here, it was given in what we’d name a ‘live performance staging’ from a crew led by Côme de Bellescize, with vivid use of costumes and lighting, in addition to wonderful, built-in appearing in spoken and, the place acceptable, sung roles alike.

The work presents Joan of Arc’s ultimate moments earlier than burning on the stake, punctuated by flashbacks to her childhood visions and to her show-trial, reaching an ecstatic apotheosis in departing this world that musically, in addition to dramatically, appears to partake extra of Claudel’s French Catholicism than Honegger’s Swiss Protestantism. Within the title function, first taken (and danced) by Ida Rubinstein, Marion Cotillard gave a memorable, charismatic efficiency in startling pink, touched by an odd fanaticism that resisted temptation to sentimentalise, while alert to situational and private injustice. (Maybe that’s residual Englishness on my half, and I ought to really feel in another way if I had been French, although I think a robust distaste for a lot of manifestations of standard piety additionally impacts my response to this peculiar determine.) Eric Génovèse gave us a sympathetic and enabling, but in the end ambiguous Brother Dominique. Christian Ganon was very a lot the showman, even conjurer, as Narrator, in a neat conception bringing to life the story from a e-book he learn to the luxurious, colourfully arrayed youngsters’s choir, Vokalhelden, known as upon to behave in addition to sing.

Their grownup counterparts, the MDR Refrain, introduced heft and agility to their half, underpinning, elucidating, and battling in a lot of the motion, Honegger’s debt to Bach as obvious as his undoubted originality. Vocal soloists, usually assuming a number of roles, all impressed, Elsa Benoit, Adèle Charvet, and Anna Kissjudit positioned in appropriately heavenly positions by the organ because the Virgin and Saints Marguerite and Catherine, vocal supply enhancing that visionary high quality. Valentyn Dytiuk’s roster of tenor roles, not least the pig, Porcus (Claudel’s play on phrases between cochon and Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais), was delivered with a tremendous sense of theatre, as nicely sung as they had been characterful; so too had been these of rich-toned bass Alex Rosen.

Alan Gilbert’s management of those forces and spirited, idiomatic taking part in from the Berlin Philharmonic proved adept in imparting a correct sense of unity to what may on paper – and likely in a lesser efficiency – pose a hazard of the unduly eclectic. Right here, the highly effective prologue, added de profundis by Claudel and Honegger in 1944, solid its darkish shadow over the proceedings to come back, as did the later rigour of Honegger’s counterpoint, with out detracting from the Prokofiev-like sardonicism of the scene with Porcus and its seemingly fond return to the comparatively carefree Twenties. One definitely felt the work’s Janus-faced high quality, positioned someplace in between, in addition to its resonances of an historic French nationalism, folksong and all. Ominous orchestral tolling and reimaginations of ‘early music’ led us by way of hallucinatory recreations of the woman’s visions, to the horrible fiery flame that may be her wedding ceremony costume, and past to the closing ensemble hymn and haunting reprise of an earlier, wandering flute solo. It was filled with incident, as an example within the ondes Martenot’s suggestion of howling canines, but in addition of quasi-cinematographic path and reflection.

Mark Berry