01 Le Secret (The Secret) 1:59 Gabriel Fauré, Op. 23 No. 3 (1881)

02 Solntse komnatu napolnilo (Sunlight Filled the Room) 1:14 Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 27 No. 1 (1916)

03 Pamyat’ o solntse (The Memory of Sunlight) 2:23 Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 27 No. 3 (1916)

04 Holding the Night 3:19 Madeleine Dring, from Four Night Songs (1976)

05 Good Morning Midnight 2:23 André Previn, from Three Dickinson Songs (1991)

06 Sonatine, M.40 in F-Sharp Minor for piano: i. Modéré 4:39 Maurice Ravel (1903–05)

07 O Boundless, Boundless Evening 2:26 Samuel Barber, Op. 45 No. 3 (1972)

08 Silent Noon 3:34 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1903)

09 Clair de lune (Moonlight) 3:00 Gabriel Fauré, Op. 46 No. 2 (1887)

10 L’Heure exquise (The Exquisite Hour) 2:12 Reynaldo Hahn, from Chansons grises (1887–90)

11 Notshu f’sadu u menya (In My Garden at Night) 1:49 Sergei Rachmaninov, Op. 38 No. 1 (1916)

12 Prelude in G-Sharp Minor, Op. 32 No. 12 2:38 Sergei Rachmaninov (1910)

13 Dein blaues Auge (Your Blue Eyes) 2:00 Johannes Brahms, Op. 59 No. 8 (1873)

14 En Sourdine (Muted) 2:58 Gabriel Fauré, Op. 58 No. 2 (1891)

15 Die Nacht (The Night) 2:33 Richard Strauss, Op. 10 No. 3 (1882–83)

16 In der Frühe (In Early Morning) 2:00 Hugo Wolf (1888)

17 Prelude in C Major for piano, Op. 12 No. 7 ‘Harp Prelude’ 2:20 Sergei Prokofiev (1906–13)

18 Recueillement (Reflection) 4:36 Claude Debussy, from Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire (1889–90)

19 Morgen! (Tomorrow) 3:28 Richard Strauss, Op. 27 No. 4 (1893–94)

20 Beim Schlafengehn (On going to sleep) 4:42 Richard Strauss, from Vier Letzte Lieder (1948)

Between darkness and light is where the poet Rabindranath Tagore places ‘the silent meeting of soul with soul... where the infinite prints its kiss on the forehead of the finite’. In his essay (‘The World of Personality’, 1917), Tagore acknowledges the transitory nature of the world and its relational aspect to time and space, heightening my own consciousness of the continuous diurnal cycle that rules our lives and influences our moods: throughout our lives we relentlessly move between the dark and the light.

Le soir, silent noon, boundless evening, die

Nacht, a hidden moon, der Frühe, sunlight, clair de lune... such metaphors are the inspiration for many of the most treasured art songs of the 19th and 20th centuries.

A desire to explore the affective influence of light on us was my starting point for the concept that became ‘Between Darkness and Light’.

The process started in 2011 in a meeting with Michael Houstoun and the Director of the Wanaka Festival, Philip Tremewan. A collaboration between Michael and I was proposed for the 2013 festival: what might this entail? Over the following year the initial concepts were developed into what became a semi-staged song recital with solo piano interludes. Tony Rabbit joined us as designer-director, and his exquisite conceptual lighting shaped the themes of the show while deftly accommodating my desire for full ‘surtitle’ translations to enhance the visual and aural effects of the performance.

Oh my beloved let us dream: it is the hourthe exquisite hour (Paul Verlaine, L’Heure exquise)

So what do the selected poems, these songs, portray? Our poets drift, as we do, between darkness and light, hovering, reluctantly slipping from night to day and returning again to darkness. They revel in the light of day, and are subsequently found joyously communing with le demi-jour, the half-light.

For Emily Dickinson ‘sunshine was a sweet place’, while Hermann Hesse, like a tired child, yearns for sleep and dreams, wanting ‘to soar in free flight, unseen...in the magic realm of the night’.

We meet Verlaine’s lovers who rejoice in l’heure exquise (the exquisite twilight hour), or embrace in the seclusion of a nocturnal garden love-nest in En Sourdine. Other poets, such as von Gilm, are fearful of the

night (‘she may steal you from me’), or spend it wracked by nightmares as in Mörike’s In der Frühe. Certainly darkness intensifies fears, and sorrows, yet here it is also the stuff of dreams, of secret love, the gift of a hidden moon, and moonlight, ‘sad and beautiful’.

There is always the promise of daybreak ‘wiping away the tears’ with ‘waves of sunlight’. Akhmatova’s sunshine gives love and life, which winter’s darkness has closed down to a memory. For Klaus Groth the intense cool light of ‘your blue eyes’ is a panacea, while in Charles Baudelaire’s Recueillement the whole realm of life is uncovered in his conversation with his own sorrow, as night falls over the city ‘like a long shroud trailing to the East’.

O Boundless, Boundless Evening, the last song composed by Samuel Barber, can be read as an acceptance of approaching death, and our lives can be seen as tracing a bigger arc than the quotidian: born from darkness into the glare of life’s light and its inherent enlightenment, then at last returning once more to darkness in death. Perhaps, as in John Henry Mackay’s Morgen!, there also shines hope, a dream of reuniting with one’s beloved on that path to the shore of ‘crossing over’: in a blaze of golden sunlight on ‘this sun-breathing earth’.

Revisiting these songs as I prepare the translations for publishing, I am struck by the depth of insight contained within these poetic texts. The challenge of crafting an English text that reflects the multiple

levels of meaning in a masterpiece such as Baudelaire’s Recueillement is insurmountable, yet I feel that a translation made by the singer herself, reflecting on the implications of the musical setting, can provide not only a sense of Baudelaire’s subject matter for someone unfamiliar with the language, but move beyond this to share a personal reading of the text, the one on which the interpretation of the song in performance has been based. This is the impetus behind my translations and, indeed, all of my performances as a singer, particularly of art song: the communication of a personal experience through the intimate miniature glass of the song form.

Having the opportunity to share this process musically in both performance and recording with wonderful Michael Houstoun, whose brilliance as a pianist is matched equally by his personal warmth and generosity in collaboration, has been a highlight of my musical journey.

Loving thanks to Michael, Rabbit, Philip, Hedda and all those involved in the creation of the show and of this recording, including Ken and Steve... and once more, Michael.

Jenny WollermanMarch 2015

Jenny Wollerman studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, graduating in 1991 with a MMus in Opera, and after further study at the Banff Centre, Canada and the Britten-Pears School in England returned to pursue her career in Australasia.

Engagements since include Léïla in Les

Pêcheurs de Perles for State Opera of South Australia, Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs

et Chantefables with Tasmanian Symphony and Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the West Australian and Adelaide Symphony orchestras.

In New Zealand she has performed with all major organisations, including New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and New Zealand

Opera. Roles include Micaëla, Xenia in Boris Godunov, Léïla, Mimì, Fiordiligi, Pamina and Johanna in Sweeney Todd. NZ International Arts Festival engagements include Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells and L’Allegro with the Mark Morris Dance Company.

Recordings include Anthony Ritchie

Symphony No. 4 with Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, and the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream music with James Judd and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

JENNY WOLLERMAN SOPRANO

MICHAEL HOUSTOUN PIANO

Michael Houstoun is widely celebrated as New Zealand’s finest pianist. A major prizewinner in the Van Cliburn, Leeds and Tchaikovsky international piano competitions, he spent his twenties based in the UK and USA before making the historic decision to return to New Zealand at the end of 1981. He has had a thriving career ever since, as a concerto soloist, recitalist, conductor and chamber musician, and is distinguished by being the only New Zealand pianist to perform the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in extensive tours around the country, the first in the mid 1990s in celebration of his 40th birthday, and the second 20 years later in Chamber Music New Zealand’s 2013 ReCycle Series.

Michael’s many awards and citations include Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and a discography including (to date) six ‘Best Classical Album’ prizes at the NZ Music Awards. He has a vast repertoire that stretches from J.S. Bach to the present day, and he is widely considered one of the great Beethoven interpreters of his generation. In 2014 he released a 14-CD boxed set of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas on Rattle, acclaimed in New Zealand and abroad as one of the all-time great Beethoven piano recordings.

LE SECRET (The Secret)Gabriel Fauré, Op. 23 No. 3 (1881)Text: Armand Silvestre

I want the morning not to knowthe name that I told to the night,and that in the dawn breeze, silently,like a tear it may evaporate away.

I want the day to proclaimthe love that I hid from the morning,and that bending over my open heartit may set it alight like a grain of incense.

I want the sunset to forgetthe secret I told to the day,and to carry it away, along with my love,in the folds of its pale robe!

SOLNTSE KOMNATU NAPOLNILOСолнце комнату наполнило (Sunlight Filled the Room)Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 27 No. 1 (1916)Text: Anna Akhmatova

Sunlight filled the room with a stream of golden dust.I woke up and remembered:Darling, today is your birthday.Because of that even the snowy view through the windows seems warm,and even I, the insomniac, slept as peacefully as a new communicant.

PAMYAT’ O SOLNTSEПамять о солнце (The Memory of Sunlight)Sergei Prokofiev, Op. 27 No. 3 (1916)Text: Anna Akhmatova

The memory of sunlight within my heart is fading,

yellowed grass.The wind blows early snowflakes gently, gently.

The willow spreads out her fan against the empty sky.Perhaps it is better after all, that I did not become your wife.

The memory of sunlight within my heart is fading.

What is this? Darkness?Perhaps it is!Winter can descend overnight.

HOLDING THE NIGHT Madeleine Dring, from Four Night Songs (1976)Text: Michael Armstrong

Holding the night in the palm of my handfeeling its blackness as the wind streams streams to the edge of the gulf to fall, fall through unknown trees.

This moment has always been ourswhen the tips of our fingers touchenclosing the gift of a hidden moonfloating, floating beyond the clouds.

GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT André Previn, from Three Dickinson Songs (1991) Text: Emily Dickinson

Good Morning – Midnight – I’m coming Home –Day – got tired of Me – How could I – of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place – I liked to stay –But Morn – didn’t want me – now – So – Goodnight – Day!

I can look – can’t I –When the East is Red?The Hills – have a way – then – that puts the Heart – abroad –

You – are not so fair – Midnight –I chose – Day –but – please take a little Girl –He turned away!

SONATINE, M.40 IN F-SHARP MINOR FOR PIANO: I. MODÉRÉMaurice Ravel (1903–05)

O BOUNDLESS, BOUNDLESS EVENINGSamuel Barber, Op. 45 No. 3 (1972)Text: Christopher Middleton after Georg Heym

O boundless, boundless evening.Soon the glowOf long hills on the skyline will be gone,Like clear dream country now, rich-hued by sun.O boundless evening where the cornfields throwThe scattered daylight back in an aureole.

Swallows high up are singing, very small.On every meadow glitters their swift flight,In woods of rushes and where tall masts standIn brilliant bays.

Yet in ravines beyondBetween the hills already nests the night.

SILENT NOON Ralph Vaughan Williams (1903)Text: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:Your eyes smile peace.

The pasture gleams and glooms’Neath billowing clouds that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge,Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.’Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonflyHangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,This close-companioned inarticulate hour,When twofold silence was the song, the song of love.

CLAIR DE LUNE (Moonlight)Gabriel Fauré, Op. 46 No. 2 (1887)Text: Paul Verlaine

Your soul is a chosen landscapecharmed by masquers and revellersplaying the lute and dancing and almostsad beneath their fanciful disguises!

Even while singing in a minor keyof victorious love and fortunate living,they do not seem to believe in their happinessand their song mingles with the moonlight,

The calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,which sets the birds in the trees dreamingand makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,the tall slender fountains among the marble statues.

L’HEURE EXQUISE (The Exquisite Hour) Reynaldo Hahn, from Chansons grises (1887–90)Text: Paul Verlaine

The white moonshines in the woods;from each branch springs a voicebeneath the arbor …

Oh my beloved.

Like a deep mirror,the pond reflectsthe silhouetteof the black willow where the wind weeps …

Let us dream. It is the hour.

A vast and tender peacefulness seems to descendfrom a sky made iridescent by the moon …

It is the exquisite hour.

NOTSHU F’SADU U MENYAНочью в саду у меня (In My Garden at Night)Sergei Rachmaninov, Op. 38 No. 1 (1916)Text: Alexander Blok, after Avetik Isahakian

In my garden at nightweeps a weeping willow,and inconsolable is she,the grief-stricken willow.

Early morning glitters,the gentle maiden sunrisewipes away the tears of the poor willow, weeping bitterly, with waves of sunlight.

PRELUDE IN G-SHARP MINOR, OP. 32 NO. 12Sergei Rachmaninov (1910)

DEIN BLAUES AUGE (Your Blue Eyes)Johannes Brahms, Op. 59 No. 8 (1873)Text: Klaus Groth

Your blue eyes are so still, I can see into their depths.You ask me, what am I trying to see?I see myself healed.

A glowing pair burned me once, the effect of them still pains me:yours are as clear as a lakeand like a lake so cool.

EN SOURDINE (Muted)Gabriel Fauré, Op. 58 No. 2 (1891)Text: Paul Verlaine

Calmly, in the semi-darkness made by the high branches,let us imbue our love with this deep silence.

Let us mingle our souls, our hearts and our ecstatic senses,amid the gentle languor of the pines and the arbutus bushes.

Half-close your eyes,cross your arms on your breast,and from your sleepy heartchase away forever all plans.

Let us abandon ourselves to the softly lilting breezewhich arrives to ruffle at your feet the waves of russet lawn.

And when, solemnly, the evening falls through the dark oaks,the voice of our despair,the nightingale, will sing.

DIE NACHT (The Night)Richard Strauss, Op. 10 No. 3 (1882–83)Text: Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg

Out of the wood steps the night,from amongst the trees she slips,gazes round her in a wide arc,now take care.

All the lights of this world,all the flowers, all the colours she extinguishes, and steals away the sheaves of wheat from the fields.

She takes everything that is dear,takes the silver away from the stream,takes from the copper-covered roof of the cathedral, its gold.

The flowering hedges have been plundered:draw nearer, soul to soul;O the night makes me fearthat she will steal you from me, too.

IN DER FRÜHE (In Early Morning)Hugo Wolf (1888)Text: Eduard Mörike

Sleep has not yet soothed my eyes,day is already beginningoutside my bedroom window.My disturbed senses still wrestle with doubtsconjuring up nightmare apparitions.My anxious soul, torment yourself no longer!Be joyful! Already, here and theremorning bells are awakening.

PRELUDE IN C MAJOR FOR PIANO, OP. 12 NO. 7 Harp PreludeSergei Prokofiev (1906–13)

RECUEILLEMENT (Reflection)Claude Debussy, from Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire (1889–90)Text: Charles Baudelaire

Be reasonable, my sorrow,compose yourself.You cried out for the evening; it is descending; it is here.A sombre mood envelops the citybringing peace to some, uneasiness to others.

While the worthless horde of humanity, under the whip of pleasure, that merciless tormentor,pursues remorse in slavish revelry,my sorrow, give me your hand; come over here,

far away from them. Discern the departed years leaning over the balconies of heaven in outdated clothing as regret, smirking, surges from the depths of the waters;

the moribund sun drifting to sleep under an arch,and, like a long shroud trailing to the East,listen, my dearest, to the gentle ambling footsteps of the night

BEIM SCHLAFENGEHEN (On Going to Sleep)Richard Strauss, from Vier Letzte Lieder (1948) Text: Hermann Hesse

Now that day has made me weary,the starry night will receive my ardent desire,caringly, as if I were a worn-out child.

Hands, now cease your work,brow, forget all thoughts,all my sensesnow want to sink themselves in slumber.

And the soullongs to soar in free flight, unseen;and to live, deeply and fully, a thousandfold over, in the magic realm of the night.

All translations and programme note © Jenny Wollerman 2015

MORGEN! (Tomorrow)Richard Strauss, Op. 27 No. 4 (1893–94)Text: John Henry Mackay

And tomorrow the sun will shine againand on the path that I will takeit will reunite us, joyful,on this sun-breathing earth …

and to the shore, the wide blue-waved shore,we will descend, quietly and slowly.Mute, we will gaze into each others’ eyes,enveloped in the speechless silence of happiness.

Wait Sholto Buck (2012)From the Wallace Art Trust collection

Sholto Buck is a 20-year old New Zealand artist currently in his third year at Elam School of Fine Arts. He is interested in photography, film, and design

The vision of the Wallace Arts Trust is to support, promote and expose New Zealand contemporary artists while providing the wider public with an inimitable cultural and historical resource of contemporary New Zealand art. These objectives are achieved in part by the acquisition of new artworks by contemporary New Zealand artists, as well as holding the annual Wallace Art Awards. In addition to operating the TSB Bank Wallace Art Centre at the Pah Homestead, 72 Hillsborough Road, Auckland, the Wallace Arts Trust loans out artworks to institutions ranging from schools to universities and hospitals. Beyond this the Trust financially supports many other arts organisations in New Zealand.

For more information: http://www.wallaceartstrust.org.nz/

Produced by Kenneth Young

Recorded in January 2014 by Steve Garden on a Steinway D at the Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Piano tuning by Michael Ashby

Cover artwork ‘Wait’ by New Zealand artist, Sholto Buck

Cover image courtesy of the Wallace Arts Trust

Photo of Jenny Wollerman byDebbie Rawson

Photo of Michael Houstoun byDean Zillwood

Concert design and source images by Tony Rabbit

Design by UnkleFranc

Printing by Studio Q

Rattle is a division of Victoria University Press, Victoria University of Wellington

RAT-D056 2015