In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day.
Ondine is delighted to announce a new release from star soprano Véronique Gens, who performs Herminie and Les Nuits d’été by Hector Berlioz and Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under the baton of their music director John Axelrod.
Véronique Gens is recognised internationally as one of the great sopranos working today. She has forged her career in the baroque repertory and the music of Mozart, but French repertoire, especially Berlioz and Ravel, are “as natural to her as the air that she breathes”. Her French remains a model of immaculate diction, both fluid and luminous.
Véronique Gens has a very special relationship to Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été and Herminie, and here combines them on this disc with Shéhérazade by Ravel, which conjures up a totally different world.
The charismatic conductor John Axelrod was appointed music director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire in 2009, and follows the philosophy of being “open to the world” with his extraordinarily diverse repertoire choices and innovative programming. He is sought after across the world both for concerts and opera.
Hector Berlioz: Herminie
Moderato - Recitative: Quel trouble te poursuit, malheureuse
Aria: Adagio non troppo, "Ah! Si de la tendresse ou mon coeur - Recitative: Que dis-je? ou s'egarent mes voeux?
Aria: Allegro assai agitato, "Arrete! Cher Tancrede" - Recitative: Que Clorinde est heureuse
Aria: Allegro impetuoso vivace, "Venez, venez, terribles armes!" - Priere: Largo, "Dieu des chretiens, toi que j'ignore - Tempo I
Hector Berlioz: Les nuits d'ete, Op. 7
No. 1. Villanelle
No. 2. Le Spectre de la rose
No. 3. Sur les lagunes
No. 4. Absence
No. 5. Au cimetiere
No. 6. L'Ile inconnue
Maurice Ravel: Sheherazade
No. 1. Asie
No. 2. La flute enchantee
No. 3. L'indifferent
21st June 2012
*****
“As you might expect, Gens's singing has sharpened its musical perceptions still further and acquired even more shades of colour since [her] earlier recording. No one today delivers French song with the combination of tonal beauty and verbal nuance she does, and each number of Nuits d'Eté offers a miniature masterclass...Pure ravishment.”
9th July 2012
“[Gens is] alive and vivid, giving a passionate account of the wonderful Sur les Lagunes. Elsewhere, she seems to me in too much of a hurry.”
September 2012
“warm, sensitive, the lyrical French soprano par excellence...Gens bring [Herminie] to life as sympathetically as any of her operatic portrayals...It is unusual to encounter a recording of Les nuits d'ete in which the colouring is so consistent throughout...Gens has in her sights a purer kind of poetry.”
October 2012
****
“In her mid-forties, this voice has become richer and even more expressive, and he works on this disc suit her to perfection. She not only pronounces the words, she feels them...Her Nuits d'ete reilshes hues both light and dark, and if she'd been around to sing Berlioz's Prix de Rome cantata Herminie in 1828, who know, he might have won gold instead of silver!”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
Moderato - Recitative: Quel trouble te poursuit, malheureuse
