January 21, 2023, 1:00 p.m
The American Winnaretta Singer, married Princesse Edmond de Polignac, ran modern music salons in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. We meet Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev, Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau there, and the young Marcel Proust often stops by.
Season 1, Episode 2: Marcel Proust becomes a regular at Winnaretta Princesse de Polignac’s salon, accompanied by music by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.
These are exuberant years and decades in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and we direct our full attention to the work of this Princesse de Polignac, who can and wants to afford the luxury of a contemporary salon complete with evening concerts for decades. Works by Gabriel Fauré and Vincent d’Indy, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, baroque works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Christoph Willibald Gluck, and later the next generation with Francis Poulenc, Manuel de Falla and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco are also performed. Jazz knocks in Paris and Cole Porter and Kurt Weill can be heard in the salon of Winnaretta, Princesse de Polignac. Female composers are more frequently represented than elsewhere: Germaine Tailleferre, Ethel Smyth and Armande de Polignac were commissioned to compose, which were performed in Winnaretta’s salons in Paris and Venice.
The crème de la crème of the then young performers also performed in the salons of Winnaretta, Princesse de Polignac, and we still have original recordings of some of them: Nadia Boulanger and Clara Haskil, Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti and Organist Marcel Dupre. It should also be mentioned that the lady whose salons we visit also supports social projects: the young Le Corbusier, for example, enjoys architectural commissions for social housing in France.
As the daughter of the American sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer, Winnaretta Singer is an heiress to millions. In 1893 she married the educated but penniless, aristocratic amateur composer Edmond de Polignac in Paris. It’s a “mariage blanc”, as it was called in Paris at the time; she’s a lesbian, he’s gay, she’s rich and he’s poor, he needs money and she needs a reputation, but most of all they both love art and music, and it turns out to be a short, almost ten-year, but extremely happy marriage. She then listened to the name Princesse Edmond de Polignac and organized concerts in her salons in Paris and Venice for decades until 1939.
series
layout
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Elke Tschaikner
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Christian Scheib
Playlist
Composer: Gabriel Faure/1845 – 1924
Title: Nocturne No.5 from “Shylock”, incidental music op.57
Orchestra: Orchester d’Auvergne
Director: Jean Jacques Kantorow
Length: 02:31 min
Label: Denon CO 75596
Composer: Heinrich Schütz/1585 – 1672
Title: Oh Lord, you creator of all things, SWV 450
Performers: Ensemble Clement Janequin
Performer/Performers: Agnes Mellon /soprano
Performer/Performers: Dominique Visse /Countertenor
Performer/Performers: Philippe Cantor /Baritone
Performer/Performers: Antoine Sicot /Bass
Performer/Performers: Bruno Boterf /Tenor
Soloist: Willem Jansen /organ
Length: 03:16 min
Label: HMC 901255
Composer: Edmond de Polignac
Title: String Quartet in F major from 1860
Ausführende: Quatuor Hermés
Length: 10:34 min
Label: Singer-Polignac Paris Foundation
Composer: Edmond de Polignac
Title: Prelude I
Performers: Laurent Martin
Length: 01:19 min
Label: Singer-Polignac Paris Foundation
Composer: Edmond de Polignac
Title: Prelude II
Performers: Laurent Martin
Length: 01:02 min
Label: Singer-Polignac Paris Foundation
Composer: Maurice Ravel/1875 – 1937
Titel: Pavane for a deceased Infanta
Soloist: Robert Casadesus /piano
Length: 05:34 min
Label: Sony MP2K 46733
Composer: Erik Satie/1866 – 1925
Title: Vexations – piece for piano (excerpt)
Soloist: Aldo Ciccolini / Piano
Length: 01:37 min
Label: EMI 5550762
Composer/Composer: Claude Leveillee
Lyricist, text source: Michel Rivgauche/1923 – 2005
Titel: The Paris metro/live
Solist/Solistin: Martha Wainwright /Gesang m.Begl.
Length: 01:48 min
Label: V2 Records/Universal 2703066
Composer: Gabriel Faure/1845 – 1924
Title: Pelleas et Melisande – Suite op.80 following the music for the drama
* Prelude – 1st movement
Orchestra: Orchestra of French-speaking Switzerland
Direction: Ernest Ansermet
Length: 05:48 min
Label: Decca 4337152
Composer: Claude Debussy/1862 – 1918
Title: Estampes – 3 Pieces for Piano
* No. 1 Pagodas. Moderate anime
Soloist: Jean Efflam Bavouzet /piano
Length: 04:56 min
Label: Chandos CHAN 10443
