Fauré: Automne, Op. 18 No. 3

Unsurprisingly, it is in the music of the Baroque era – the heyday of the castrato – that French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has captured the attention of music-lovers lovers around the world. The ethereal, but sensuous beauty of his voice, his virtuosity and his sense of style have brought him critical praise, a number of major awards – including, in 2008, Germany’s prestigious Echo-Klassik prize for Male Singer of the Year, honouring his Virgin Classics album, Carestini: The Story of a Castrato – and impressive sales: more than 120,000 copies of his Vivaldi album Heroes and 90,000 of the Carestini release.

Jaroussky enters new territory with this programme of French songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries – well over a hundred years after the end of the Baroque era. Taking its name, Opium, from a song by Saint-Saëns, it evokes the voluptuous, sometimes decadent spirit of the Belle Époque, the era of transition between Romanticism and Modernism. The programme includes a number of rarities by composers such as Dukas, Caplet, and Chaminade, as well as better-known numbers by figures like Fauré, Chausson and Hahn.

“Many people will probably wonder why a counter tenor should sing these songs,” says Jaroussky, “but if you think about it, the countertenor voice as such has no repertoire of its own, except the modern music written specifically for it. For the most part we sing music written for castratos who – as we know – had very different voices from ours. So why not venture into other musical worlds if we feel they are suited to our voices? … There has been David Daniels in Schubert, Max Emmanuel Cencic in Rossini, and even Andreas Scholl and Gérard Lesne in pop music.

“I’ve always felt a special affinity for French song, which was an area of focus in the early days of my studies with my teacher, Nicole Fallien. It was Renaud Capuçon -- whom I want to thank, along with Gautier Capuçon and Emmanuel Pahud for his valuable contribution to this disc -- who first had the idea of inviting me to sing Hahn, Chausson, Fauré in a recital. It was then that I met the pianist Jérôme Ducros, and we decided to work further on this rich and well-stocked repertoire, which contains some real undiscovered treasures. There is no theme to this album, but I wanted to record songs which have captured my heart and which suit my voice. Perhaps I can show them in a new light too.”

French song demands an acute sense of language and style, and today there are relatively few singers --- even native Francophones – who succeed in capturing its elusive magic. “I’ve decided to pronounce the texts in a way that is as close as possible to the spoken word – I don’t roll the ‘r’, for example,” continues Jaroussky. “The poetry should come to life without the imposition of too much interpretation or emotional contrivance. I’ve tried to approach it with humility.”

"Philippe Jaroussky is one of the best countertenors around. His voice is mellow, evenly toned, wide-ranging and largely free from intrusive mannerism and vocal strain” BBC Music Magazine, February 2007

This is a unique recital of lieder by composers who were contemporaries of one another whose music is likely to appeal to the same music-lover. Alongside relatively familiar songs by Richard Strauss and Gabriel Fauré, from whence the CD takes its title, we are pleased to include rarely-heard examples from Reger, Pfitzner and Wolf-Ferrari. Sarah Maeder is a much-admired soprano who has made a special study of this repertoire, and she is excellently accompanied by the talented Gérard Wyss, to produce a recording that will be highly-prized by connoisseurs of this distinguished repertoire.

This CD presents a collection of French art songs – mélodies - covering a wide range of emotional and stylistic content from Fauré to Ibert. The French declamatory style emphasizes the text rather than the melody, but it is the piano part where the beauty of the music can shine through, both in the rich textures employed and in the special harmonies. This is particularly evident in the songs by Henri Duparc. The three songs by Ravel were his last works. Carlo Colombara has been a regular guest at the leading opera houses in Italy and abroad. He has worked with the most renowned conductors, such as Sir Colin Davis, Carlo Maria Giulini, Vladimir Jurowski, Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Sir Georg Solti. Critics in Italy and abroad have praised his stylistic versatility and the dark timbre and the colourful diversity of Colombara’s voice makes him one of the most sought-after basses of our time.

It was in 1972, when he was singing at Glyndebourne, that Cuenod began recording for Nimbus. In these records he leaves a unique and precious account of French song, which, incidentally, he taught every year in Europe and the United States. This album of Fauré and Duparc has never previously been released. Hugues Cuenod was between seventy and seventy-six at the time and the result is miraculous. Hear how skilfully he 'speaks' the text like an actor, with perfect diction and clarity. His style is admirably simple and natural, which is the most difficult thing to achieve in the very special art of the French 'mélodie'. He never descends into sentimentality or over-interpretation, temptations to which many singers of both sexes too often succumb.