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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Ravel: Mélodies
Nora Gubisch (mezzo-soprano) & Alain Altinoglu (piano) The mélodies presented here were written between 1903 and 1927. They display in exemplary fashion the different facets of the art of Ravelian song. Some malcontents have declared them 'unclassifiable'. In fact, what is striking here is the diversity, the eclecticism, the independence of the composer when he chooses, as encounters and opportunities crop up, to illustrate a poem by Verlaine, to set to music the prose of Jules Renard, or to harmonise a Greek or Hebrew tune. This footloose stroll through different times and cultures gives us an insight into the composer's inquiring mind, his determination to follow his wishes and desires, without noisily drawing attention to himself, yet tranquilly standing his ground in his personal world while apparently indifferent to the scandals he quite involuntarily provoked. The song texts reflect Ravel's literary culture, his interest in and respect for literature, which had been as Integral a part of his life as music ever since his adolescence, when, in the company of Ricardo Vines (great-great-uncle of Nora Gubisch), he frequented the bookshops and the second-hand booksellers along the Seine. After musical studies at the Radio France Maîtrise and piano study with Catherine Collard, mezzo-soprano Nora Gubisch was awarded first prize for singing at the Paris Conservatoire, going on to study with Vera Rózsa, who became her principal teacher and mentor. She quickly earned leading rôles with the Paris Opéra, La Scala, Milan, San Francisco Opera, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence and the BBC Proms. She has been a guest of the Vienna, New York and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, Dresden Staatskapelle, Orchestre de Paris and London Symphony Orchestra, with conductors including Sir Colin Davis, Lorin Maazel, Georges Prêtre and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She has formed a duo with pianist and conductor, Alain Altinoglu, now her husband, and has recorded many songs. “Ravel effected an understated formal revolution in vocal music, the pieces performed here by mezzo-soprano Nora Gubisch with pianist Alain Altinoglu being notable for their commitment to textual interpretation rather than sheer operatic grandeur.” The Independent, 18th August 2012 *** “Not since the incomparable Régine Crespin...has a female French singer brought such insights and vocal allure to her native song repertoire as Nora Gubisch...Her voice remains youthful and bright, but capable of producing a wide spectrum of timbres for the very different demands of this challenging Ravel programme...The Kaddish can surely have never been more moving than it sounds on this fabulous disc.” Sunday Times, 26th August 2012 “It is a long, long time since anyone delved into Ravel’s songs as persuasively as Gubisch and her regular accompanist. The French mezzo-soprano has a full, voluptuous voice, but the key to her artistry lies in the idiomatic touch she brings to the music, based on her understanding of the texts and the difference it makes to the musical line...An outstanding recital.” Financial Times, 1st September 2012 ***** “One of the many attractions of this lovely disc is the exceptionally thoughtful booklet essay by Nina Vines … The recording is very fine and natural, with excellent balance … as fine a performance as I have ever heard … The individual songs are splendid” International Record Review, November 2012 “Altinoglu exploits the colours and textures with the utmost eloquence … Gubisch, with a vocal timbre of mellifluous beauty and well-focused richness, responds with the striking malleable spectrum of sensibility to the varied scenarios that Ravel encapsulates.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2012 “[Gubisch] combines a beautiful voice with intelligence, crisp diction and a real sense of style...I would guess she's lived with this music for a long time...this is a disc from which young and even less young singers can learn a great deal. 'Aoua!', the central song of the Chansons madecasses, is truly terrifying, as it ought to be.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2012 ***** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Albéniz: The French Connection
Marisa Martins (mezzo-soprano) & Mac McClure (piano) After the Spanish composer Albéniz settled in Paris, he became part of an inner circle of composers including Chausson, Dukas, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. All of the works on this CD were written between 1895 and 1909, the year Albéniz died. They show a great variety of styles and colours and it is sublime music. | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Pierre Bernac & Francis Poulenc
Pierre Bernac (baritone) & Francis Poulenc (piano) Pierre Bernac used his high baritone voice, a typical baryton Martin, to great advantage in the songs of Poulenc and other French composers but with his flexibility of vocal expression and fine diction was also an outstanding singer of German lieder. This CD also includes songs by Ravel, Chabrier, Debussy and Satie. Recorded in Feburary and March 1950 “Classic recordings preserving a famous artistic partnership” BBC Music Magazine, September 2010 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Simon Keenlyside & Malcolm Martineau
Fauré: | Aubade, Op. 6 No. 1 En sourdine, Op. 58 No. 2 (Verlaine) Green, Op. 58 No. 3 (Verlaine) Notre amour Op. 23 No. 2 Fleur jetée, Op. 39 No. 2 Spleen, Op. 51 No. 3 (Verlaine) Madrigal Op. 35 Le papillon et la fleur, Op. 1 No. 1 | Poulenc: | Hotel Encore | Ravel: | Histoires naturelles (5) | Schubert: | An Sylvia, D891 Die Einsiedlei D393 (Salis-Seewis) Verklarung D59 (Herder, after Pope) Die Sterne, D939 (Leitner) Himmelsfunken, D651 Ständchen 'Leise flehen meine Lieder', D957 No. 4 | Wolf, H: | Der Knabe und das Immlein (No. 2 from Mörike-Lieder) Gesang Weylas (No. 46 from Mörike-Lieder) An die Geliebte (No. 32 from Mörike-Lieder) Auf eine Christblume II (No. 21 from Mörike-Lieder) Lied eines Verliebten (No. 43 from Mörike-Lieder) Lied vom Winde |
He was already noted as a recitalist, and “a talent to cherish” as far back as 1989. Since appearing in La Scala in 1998 he has performed recitals all over the world, his repertoire including: Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Brahms, Fauré, Wolf and Mahler. He has also recorded many English songs. Gramophone describe him as the finest baritone singer of Lieder this country has ever produced. In Simon's own words “I've probably got around 15 years, and think I can see the end of the tunnel. I've done most of the roles that suit me and some, like Papageno, I'll never want to drop…” “In Wagner I shan't go beyond Wolfram in Tannhauser. I know there's Beckmesser, but I'm afraid it's not a role that excites or fascinates me. I'll never get tired of the stand-and-sing roles like Germont in Traviata and Posa in Don Carlos - parts where you really have to act with your voice and pin the audience to their seats with inflexion, nuance and colour. I probably shan't sing Billy Budd again… and am moving down from Pelleas to Golaud. The two new roles I'm most excited about are Wozzeck and Rigoletto, which are both great theatre and call on a huge palette of colours. Wozzeck in particular, is a mountain any baritone wants to climb…” “The opening Schubert group demonstrates the baritone's natural and unaffected delivery - an ability to hold words and notes together in one single gesture - and his finely tuned vocalism, founded on a lightly rounded but always expressive tone. He sounds equally at ease in the French half of the programme. ...'En sourdine' flows beautifully...and the light humour of 'Le Papillon et la Fleur', Fauré's Op. 1 No. 1, is flawlessly conveyed in Martineau's enchantingly lithe pianism.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2009 “Hugo Wolf is at his most welcoming in "Der Knabe und das Immelein" and Keenlyside is at his most responsive in "An die Geliebte". Keenlyside is at his best in "Notre amour" - and very French. In… Malcolm Martineau: he has a collaborator in whom the life of texts as well as the music is experienced and communicated unfailingly.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2009 “you’re being invited to step into a more gently nuanced and delicately observed world, where the expressive weight of each phrase is being judged to perfection, with not a gram of emotional excess...this is such a successful document of the occasion that you might honestly end up feeling that you were [there]… and can be again, and again.” Andrew McGregor, bbc.co.uk, 22nd December 2009 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Ravel - Songs
The award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake continue their musical explorations with this beautiful and thought-provoking disc. Gerald Finley’s lustrous tones, extraordinary gift for characterisation, and direct, unaffected utterance make him an ideal and revelatory performer of Ravel’s songs. These works, somewhat under-appreciated in the composer’s oeuvre, demonstrate the endless variety and vast emotional scope of Ravel’s musical sphere. Charming folk-song settings contrast with the almost surrealist world of Histoires naturelles, which caused outrage at its first performance. Yet this cycle contains some of Ravel’s most dreamily beautiful music: the still, crystalline ‘music of silence’ created in Le martin-pêcheur. In the words of Roger Nichols, who provides the fascinating booklet notes, ‘From the sepulchral gloom of Un grand sommeil noir to the final exclamation ‘Je bois / À la joie’ …, Ravel’s songs embrace a whole world’. “After acclaimed recordings of Barber, Ives and Schumann, baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake pull off another success with this disc of Ravel songs. These are for the most part works of cool restraint, with passion hidden beneath a jewelled surface, and Finley’s wonderfully flexible voice achieves maximum effect with minimal means.” The Telegraph, 10th June 2009 **** “Finley sings with the art that conceals art — relishing but never overpointing the texts, and using a wide palette of dynamic and colour to underpin his musical insights. Other highlights are the inward-looking Ronsard à son âme, the passionate Les grands vents venus d’outremer and the lamenting Deux melodies hébraïques. A superb disc.” Sunday Times, 28th June 2009 **** “Gerald Finley and Julius Drake's survey gathers all his major songs together. It's a beautiful disc that startles in ways you don't always expect.” The Guardian, 12th June 2009 **** “It feels inadequate…just to describe this enchanting new collection from Gerald Finley and Julius Drake as the best modern recital devoted to the wonderfully varied world of Ravel's songs. Finley gives the melancholic affirmation of 'Kaddisch' its full weight of understated nobility, and is clearly having fun in the drinking song from Don Quichotte à Dulcinée.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2009 ***** “…the mood might be robust or rarefied, but Ravel's sense of colour and atmosphere is infallible. Drake draws the ear ineluctably into Ravel's imaginative world… Finley's mellifluous, malleable baritone is similarly an ideal match for this repertoire, with lines eloquently floated, nuances subtly voiced and character sensitively defined. This is a beguiling programme, beautifully performed.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2009 “There is a vast gulf between the bibulous bravado of the 'Chanson à boire' that Ravel included in his Don Quichotte à Dulcinée songs and the bleak, dark despair of his Verlaine setting Un Grand sommeil noir. Placing them next to one another in this fine selection of over two dozen songs emphasises the broad expressive range that Ravel was able to embrace. It also throws into focus the way that Gerald Finley and Julius Drake can so evocatively tap their emotional substance.
These exquisitely crafted miniatures, whether in the folk-inspired Chants populaires and Cinqmélodies populaires grecques or in the tender Noëlsdes jouets to a text of Ravel's own, show his creative fastidiousness in a consistently positive light: the mood might be robust or rarefied, but Ravel's sense of colour and atmosphere is infallible.
The imagery of the Histoires naturelles, for example, testifies to Ravel's intuitive response to poetry and to his precise placing of the tonal brushstrokes. In this respect, the piano is an essential collaborator, etching in the background for the gliding grace of the swan or the chirping of the cricket.
Drake draws the ear ineluctably into Ravel's imaginative world, as he does elsewhere in the cool restraint of Ronsard à son âme or the turbulence and shifting currents of Les Grands Ventsvenus d'outremer. Finley's mellifluous, malleable baritone is similarly an ideal match for this repertoire, with lines eloquently floated, nuances subtly voiced and character sensitively defined.
This is a beguiling programme, beautifully performed.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Melodies Francaises pour Bariton
Chausson: | Les Papillons, Op. 2 No. 3 (Gautier) Le temps des lilas Le Colibri, Op. 2 No. 7 (de Lisle) Le Charme, Op. 2 No. 2 (Silvestre) | Debussy: | Auprès de cette grotte sombre Mandoline (Verlaine) | Duparc: | Chanson triste L'Invitation au voyage | Fauré: | Cinq Melodies 'de Venise', Op. 58 Clair de Lune, Op. 46 No. 2 Après un rêve, Op. 7 No. 1 Au bord de l'eau, Op. 8 No. 1 (Prudhomme) Arpège, Op. 76 No. 2 (Samain) En sourdine, Op. 58 No. 2 (Verlaine) L'horizon chimérique, Op. 118 | Ravel: | Histoires naturelles (5) Don Quichotte à Dulcinée with Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, Eduoard Lindberg |
Recorded 1950-1954 “France's equivalent of Fischer-Dieskau sings Fauré, Duparc and Ravel with characteristic expressive elegance that transcends the rather elderly recordings.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2006 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Gérard Souzay
Falla: | Siete Canciones populares españolas | Fauré: | C'est l'extase langoureuse, Op. 58 No. 5 (Verlaine) Green, Op. 58 No. 3 (Verlaine) Mandoline, Op. 58 No. 1 (Verlaine) Prison, Op. 83 No. 1 Spleen, Op. 51 No. 3 (Verlaine) Tristesse, Op. 6 No. 2 Au bord de l'eau, Op. 8 No. 1 (Prudhomme) Après un rêve, Op. 7 No. 1 Clair de Lune, Op. 46 No. 2 (Verlaine) Arpège, Op. 76 No. 2 (Samain) En sourdine, Op. 58 No. 2 (Verlaine) L'horizon chimérique, Op. 118 | Ravel: | Histoires naturelles (5) |
Gérard Souzay (baritone), Jacqueline Bonneau & Dalton Baldwin (piano) Recorded 1950-55 “Canciones populaires espanolas could not be sung with greater feeling...it has lost none of its ability to enchant and remains one of the most eloquent of Souzay's song records.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Mélodies: Stéphane Degout & Hélène Lucas
New Naïve signing baritone Stéphane Degout has already featured as soloist with the internationally renowned choral group Accentus on Brahms' German Requiem and Fauré's Requiem. The programme on his solo debut CD is a selection of mélodies by various French composers, Debussy, Ravel, Duparc, Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, and Reynaldo Hahn. Stéphane Degout first met pianist Hélène Lucas when he entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon in 1995. She soon detected the young singer’s qualities and introduced him to the world of the mélodie and the lieder, and Stéphane gave his first recitals of this repertoire with Hélène Lucas as accompanist. After his acclaimed debut as Papageno at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, the international operatic world opened its doors to him and kept him away from the lied and the mélodie for a while, but he has now returned to his roots. Next to the great names of the French mélodie, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, Gounod, Bizet, Chabrier and Saint-Saëns appear less often in the singer’s repertoire. Among the latter’s many songs the pieces featured here are splendid examples of subtle orientalism. The less numerous mélodies of Chabrier introduce a French approach to Wagnerism with highly elaborate piano parts and extremely sensual vocal lines. The third of the somewhat neglected mélodistes represented in this programme is Reynaldo Hahn. His vocal works are frequently viewed as relatively lightweight, but the two songs featured here Trois jours de vendanges, and Cimetière de campagne are full of depth and melancholy. “[there's] no mistaking the quality of his sensual, yet gritty voice, or of his artistry...Degout has an exceptional, if unobtrusive way of projecting a text, and you're conscious – as in the various settings of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Gautier – of listening to great poetry as well as great music...There's wonderfully fluid playing from his accompanist Hélène Lucas, too.” The Guardian, 10th February 2011 ***** “The voice - a natural for Pelléas, one would think - responds rapturously to Debussy and Verlaine's submarine wonders” Gramophone Magazine, April 2011 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Hommage To Jane Bathori
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| |  | Ravel - Songs
Inva Mula, Valerie Millot (sopranos), Claire Brua (mezzo-soprano), Gérard Theruel, Laurent Naouri (baritones), David Abramovitz (piano) | | | (also available to download from $10.75) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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