Poulenc: Les chemins de l'amour

This new album by Sergei Nakariakov, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Dahlem, south-west Berlin, in August 2010 by the same team that made most of his Teldec recordings, is dedicated to his late mentor, the great Russian trumpeter, Timofei Dokshizer.

Spectacular virtuoso trumpet works are featured alongside smoother works on the flugel horn.

Composing over 150 works for piano and voice over a period of 44 years, the songs of Francis Poulenc remain consistently popular to concert audiences the world over. Varying in their individual style and character in a way that defies generalisation, Poulenc set music to a wide range of different French poetry – both ancient and modern - and from the serious to the surreal. This is the second release in the series of the complete songs of Francis Poulenc, performed by some of the greatest singers of the day and accompanied by the exceptional Malcolm Martineau. Praise for the first disc was extensive.

Susan Graham’s eagerly awaited new ONYX CD is a characteristically wide ranging recital which covers a wide spectrum of female emotions as experienced by the virgins, vixens and one of the most frightening of viragos – Lady Macbeth, all captured here in song. In addition to these emotional extremes, there are also lighter issues for a girl to confront, in the Poulenc, and a fruitless pursuit of a boy in the Sondheim to lighten the mood! Susan is one of the great mezzo sopranos of our time, renowned for her operatic performances, and for her recitals. Her earlier CD for ONYX ‘Un frisson francais – A century of French Song' was widely praised.

Few instruments are as adept as the clarinet at imitating the sound of the human voice in its whole range of vocal expression. This has been especially true since the Romantic period: time and again composers have had recourse to the clarinet whenever they wanted to evoke an emotional – but unsentimental – mood or to create the sort of atmosphere of dreamy otherworldliness that is associated with the hours of twilight: here one thinks especially of Carl Maria von Weber in Germany and of Berlioz in France. Nicola Jürgensen goes a step further – “into the night” – in her present programme, Dans la nuit, which takes its title from a song by Reynaldo Hahn. The clarinettist, who has appeared as a soloist with many leading European orchestras, while also making a name for herself as a chamber recitalist at international music festivals such as Risør and Lockenhaus, has adapted these 19th- and early 20th-century French works for her instrument and recorded them with the pianist Matthias Kirschnereit. Well-known and lesser-known songs by Berlioz, Hahn, Fauré and Poulenc feature here alongside more dramatic and virtuoso pieces. The result of this unexpected instrumental union is a living impression of the Paris salons of the belle époque, captured in stylish interpretations. Who would have thought that Saint-Saëns’s 'Introduction et Rondo capriccioso' could sound as brilliantly effective on the clarinet as it does in its original version for the violin? Nicola Jürgensen has garnered equally enthusiastic reviews for her work in the world of the modern music theatre – she has already been heard onstage as Eva in Stockhausen’s 'Michaels Reise um die Erde' at the Vienna Festival and in other leading centres of music. François Borne’s 'Fantaisie brillante on themes from Bizet’s Carmen' is a cleverly compiled potpourri that maintains the drama of its source and holds its own even when compared with the original version for flute, at least as interpreted here by Nicola Jürgensen. A further operatic melody originally scored for the violin is the famous “Méditation” from Massenet’s opera 'Thaïs', which rounds off an outstanding release on a note of mellifluous inwardness.

This CD features a particular type of French song. All the "romances" were written after 1830 and include songs by Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Fauré, Hahn and Poulenc. The Belgian bass-baritone Werner van Mechelen is a highly versatile artist and is particularly drawn to the lied genre.

This is the first CD of French music for Arte Verum and also the first CD of Poulenc recorded by Barbara Hendricks.These songs are real jewels, ideal for Barbara Hendricks who has the necessary mischievous spirit to carry them off. The cycle Tel jour telle nuit, which she has toured for some years, is considered to contain Poulenc's finest songs and has been compared with Schubert's Winterreise.

From his 140 songs Ms Hendricks has made a judicious selection: "I had the privilege to work with Pierre Bernac near the end of his life on Debussy's La Demoiselle Élue and I was grateful to have been able to connect, albeit briefly, to a tradition that had also inspired my teacher Jennie Tourel. She knew Bernac, had been pupil of the French composer, Reynaldo Hahn, and infected me with her passion for the French mélodie." Barbara Hendricks, February 2008