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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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| |  | 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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| |  | Barbara Hendricks - Orchestral Songs
“An engaging set of French language orchestral songs, the juxtaposition of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Britten's Les Illuminations being especially rewarding. None of the performances are weak, but all are surpassed elsewhere.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Victoria de los Angeles sings Ravel, Debussy and Duparc
(Recorded 1962 & 1966) “A very beautiful and very enjoyable recital of French orchestral songs, sensitively accompanied. The coupling has this justly adored singer, in excellent form, in further songs by Ravel and Debussy with Soriano as the sympathetic piano accompanist.” Gramophone Magazine | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Of the Hungarian and Jewish Soul
Duo Edan (Edua Zadory - violin, Anastasiia Dombrovska - piano) | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Gérard Souzay and Dalton Baldwin: Duo Recital
Gérard Souzay was one of the really great singers of the 20th century and was admired for his sense of style and musicality. His Lieder interpretations are considered as legendary. This is one of the few recordings of Souzay available on the international market and was recorded when the singer was in his prime in 1960. “The French lyric baritone in a fragrant Liederabend from the 1960 Schwetzingen Festival which includes soft-focus Schubert and Strauss, and Frank Martin's Siz Monologues for Everyman.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2012 *** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | reVisions
Steven Isserlis has earned a reputation as one of the foremost cellists of our day. At the same time he has become known for his ingenuity and innovation in programming, something which this disc is the perfect example of. It combines four works for cello and orchestra all arranged at his personal request, and each of them by the arranger of his choice. The most radical reworking is the opening piece, an arrangement based on the fact that Debussy at the age of 19 composed a Suite for cello and orchestra. All that is known for certain about this suite is that its fourth movement was called Intermezzo, and that this piece has survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of – or rather replacement for – Debussy’s original composition, Sally Beamish has used this piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period, including the piano pieces Rêverie and Danse bohémienne. The two Ravel songs which follow were arranged by Isserlis’ friend, the violinist Richard Tognetti, in order to supplement the concert programme for a tour that the two were to make with Tognetti’s own Australian Chamber Orchestra. Vladimir Blok’s orchestration of Prokofiev’s Concertino, which had been left incomplete at the death of the composer, was made as Isserlis was unhappy with the existing arrangement of the work, made by Kabalevsky. The disc closes with the earliest of these four re-visions, film composer Christopher Palmer’s orchestration of Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life. Throughout the programme Isserlis receives the expert support of Tapiola Sinfonietta and Gábor Takács-Nagy. “The quiet mood of Steven Isserlis's latest disc may be partly explained by the dedication: "In loving and grateful memory" of his wife, Pauline, who died in June...Sally Beamish's rigorous reconstruction breathes life into Debussy's early, mostly lost Suite for Cello and Orchestra” The Observer, 15th August 2010 “Vladimir Blok's chamber orchestration of Rostropovich's completion of Prokofiev's Concertino is a brew of glistening celesta, while Sally Beamish opts for sequins in her tea-dance reimagining of Debussy's Suite for Cello and Orchestra.” The Independent, 15th August 2010 “Expect nothing po-faced from Steven Isserlis, a cellist never afraid of taking risks and revealing his heart. The disc’s repertoire is also distinctive. Emotions throb hardest in the songs and laments of Bloch’s From Jewish Life...Refined playing by the Tapiola Sinfonietta add to the pleasure.” The Times, 18th August 2010 **** “Isserlis finds wonderful, darkly smouldering tone and line for Ravel's Two Melodies (originally for soprano voice) and the three Ernest Bloch pieces. He excels, too, in the busier idiom of Prokofiev's three-movement Concertino” Classic FM Magazine, November 2010 **** “Beamish's realisation - or re-imagining - of a putative Debussy suite is a delight. This is, in a sense, Debussy before he became Debussy...Beamish's orchestration, as reproduced by the Tapiola Sinfonietta under Gábor Takács-Nagy, is lucid and deft, and the piece has allure.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2010 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Montserrat Caballe: Volume 1Teatro Real Madrid 1983
Montserrat Caballe gave this concert in Madrid in 1983. Accompanied by Miguel Zanetti on piano, she sang arias and songs by Vivaldi, Giordano, Galuppi, Gluck, Bellini and Ravel. Being as there is so little of Caballe available on DVD these two releases will delight every fan of this remarkable soprano. | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | TziganeMusic for Violin, Cello and Piano by Maurice Ravel
Kristian Winther (violin), Anthony Romaniuk (piano) & Michelle Wood (cello) Stunning young violin talent Kristian Winther makes his recording debut in the company of two of Australia’s finest young chamber musicians. Kristian Winther and Michelle Wood are first violin and cellist of one of Australia’s most exciting emerging ensembles, the acclaimed TinAlley String Quartet, winners of the 2007 Banff International Quartet Competition An experienced soloist, chamber and orchestral player, Winther has a growing reputation as a performer who brings a contemporary freshness and vitality to established repertoire Anthony Romaniuk is a pianist with a growing reputation in both the classical and jazz fields and is gaining considerable attention for his interpretations of core repertoire and as one of the most imaginative of a new generation of improvisers Tzigane is the first of two Melba discs from Anthony Romaniuk - next spring will see the release of his telling new recording of Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Steve Davislim Michelle Wood is the cellist with the 2007 Banff Competition-winning TinAlley String Quartet and one of an exciting new generation of Australian musicians The programme throws an illuminating spotlight on the French-born Ravel’s fascination with the musical traditions of other countries. It includes the ever-popular Tzigane, the Gershwin-influenced Second Violin Sonata, the gorgeous Pièce en forme de Habañera, the rarely heard and evocative Deux mélodies hébraïques as well as the unusual counterpoint of the Sonata for Violin and Cello | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
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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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