Berlioz: Les Nuits d'été, Op. 7

Robin Ticciati cements his reputation as an outstanding Berliozian with his latest recording, ‘Berlioz: Les nuits d’été’, which includes excerpts from Roméo & Juliette and La Mort de Cléopâtre.

A pupil of Sir Simon Rattle and the great Berliozian Sir Colin Davis, Robin’s reputation as one of this generation's best conductors was assured when he was announced as the next music director of Glyndebourne, taking over from Vladimir Jurowski in 2014.

Named one of the top ten young ‘conductors on the verge of greatness' by Gramophone Magazine, Robin delivers fresh insights and vivid colours into this luminous work.

The recording features Kathleen Ferrier prize-winning mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and won acclaim as Cleopatra, a role she reprises here: ‘...the core of this stunning concert was a shattering, heart-rending performance by Cargill in awesome voice.’ (The Herald)

The works of Berlioz have featured prominently in Ticciati’s programmes with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra since he became their principal conductor in 2009.

Ticciati’s recording debut, ‘Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique’, received rave reviews: it was named Critics' Choice 'Sound of 2012' (The Independent), 'Classical CD of the Week' (The Sunday Times), 'Disc of the Week' (BBC Radio 3 'CD Review') and No. 3 in The Sunday Times’ Best Classical Albums of 2012 list.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra is internationally recognised as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world with a multi award-winning catalogue of recordings under Robin Ticciati, Sir Charles Mackerras, Alexander Janiczek and Joseph Swensen.

Opera Rara's commitment to upcoming young artists has been an essential part of the company’s work since it began and this new release features a double bill of Massenet’s Le Portrait de Manon and Berlioz’s song cycle Les Nuits d’été, recorded from a live staged performances at the Royal Opera House with artists from the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and the Southbank Sinfonia. This is the first time the composers Massenet and Berlioz have appeared as part of the Opera Rara catalogue.

Le Portrait de Manon (1894) – From the opening bars of Des Grieux’s celebrated air “Ah fuyez, douce image”, the score is peppered with familiar quotations from Massenet’s earlier work, Manon – written 10 years before. Des Grieux (ZhengZhong Zhou) is now an old man, still obsessed with memories of his lost love Manon, and keeps a portrait of her in a sealed box. He is worried when his impressionable young nephew Jean (Hanna Hipp) tells of his love for a penniless girl, Aurore (Susana Gaspar), convinced that she is little more than a gold-digger. Persuaded by his friend Tiberge (Pablo Bemsch), Des Grieux comes to realise that their love is genuine when they discover the portrait and it is revealed that Aurore is, in fact, the niece of his beloved Manon.

Les Nuits d’été – We are more familiar with hearing the cycle performed in concert by a solo voice but Berlioz did, in fact, intend these songs to be distributed amongst a number of different voice types, so it seems a natural choice to follow this arrangement for the young artists performing here.

The 1CD set, a live recording from a staged performance, comes with a lavishly illustrated book, including a complete libretto for Le Portrait de Manon and song translations for Les Nuits d’été and detailed notes on these pieces from musicologist Hugh Macdonald.

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.

“It all began with Berlioz' Nuits d’été. The first time I sang this cycle I was struck by the power yet gentleness that these pieces emanate. Berlioz originally composed his work for voice and piano and I decided to champion that version for the fine chamber relationship it permits. We have aimed to convey all the intimacy of these songs, attempting extreme dynamics, passages almost in recitative, while retaining the lyricism of Berlioz's work. The next step was to find more treasures with a similar nocturnal setting. So Johanne Ralambondrainy and I, who have long been accomplices, went through the collections, discovering or rediscovering songs that appealed to us, then whittling those down to the ones we felt were absolutely essential. In some cases we have taken the liberty of removing mélodies from the cycle to which they normally belong. We have thus brought together composers we love and mélodies we find exciting and original… Finally, I asked Christian Pageault, an actor I particularly appreciate for his precision and dramatic intensity, to join me as narrator, reciting some parts of the poems. The texts you will hear were with me constantly as an inspiration throughout the conception and realisation of this project.” Isabelle Druet

The works of William Shakespeare have inspired numerous composers but the effect on Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was deep and life-long – he even married the actress, Harriet Smithson, whose performances as Ophelia (Hamlet) and then, with even greater impact, as Juliet, had kindled this passion. Berlioz did not, like his later compatriot, Gounod, create an opera but what he described as a “Dramatic Symphony” – the play’s central love scene has no voices it is left to the orchestra to give a emotionally highly charged description.

Of the three soloists it is only the bass soloist who is given a specific role in the work, that of Friar Laurence; the other two merely describe the feelings of the two lovers. With a chorus adding considerable colour he created a work which had commentators like Dumas ecstatic in their enthusiasm for it. Riccardo Muti with his Philadelphia Orchestra and soloists – Jessye Norman, John Aler and Simon Estes clearly revel in the remarkable orchestration and colour that the composer demands. Berlioz, however, was not exclusively dramatic or spectacular in his compositions as the beautiful selection of songs Les Nuits d’été show. Originally written with piano accompaniment in 1840/1 he orchestrated them fifteen years later. They explore different aspects of romantic love they are as beautiful as anything he wrote. The classic recording with Dame Janet Baker and Sir John Barbirolli complete this valuable set.

Bernarda Fink, Kent Nagano and the musicians of the DSO Berlin invite you to a recital of mélodies bathed in typically French sensuality. Sixty years separate the Nuits d'été from Shéhérazade, yet it seems as if time has been abolished, leaving a single conception that stands above mere stylistic differences: the sumptuous sound characteristic of Berlioz’s orchestration, whose Mediterranean strains find an echo a little farther east in the music of Ravel...