Gabriel Faure (1845-1924): Dans la forêt de Septembre, op. 85 no. 1 (1902)

Aria Bower, SopranoJulian Drummond: Piano

recorded at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music

rough translation:Branches, muffled sounds,sonorous trunks hollowed by agethe ancient, mournful forest correspondsto our own melancholy.

Oh pines, clinging to the edges of abysses,Deserted nests in broken branches,Burnt thickets, flowers without dew,You know well how one suffers!

And when man, a pale passerby,Weeps in the solitary woods,Cries of darkness and of mysterywelcome him, in tears like his own.

Good forest! Open promiseOf that exile which life implores,I come with a step [that is] still livelyInto your depths [that are] still green.

But from a thin branch on the footpathA reddish flower, grazes my headand trembles on my shoulder;

It is the aging forest,knowing winter, when all abortsTo be already close in me as itselfhas given me the fraternal almsOf its first dead leaf!