Ravel: Trois chansons madécasses

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.

If anyone may lay claim to the title of prima donna assoluta of the late 20th century, it is surely Jessye Norman. She is one of the great communicators. Whether in the intimate setting of the Wigmore Hall in London, or the huge space of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, she can give each listener the sense that her song is directed straight at them. Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1945. She studied at Howard University, the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Michigan. In 1968 she won the Munich International Music Competition, and this led to an invitation to sing in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper, where she made her debut as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser. After that her career blossomed and she went on to conquer the world’s greatest opera houses including La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan in New York. One of her greatest triumphs in New York was in 1982, in Robert Wilson's Great Day in the Morning, and in 1989 she was invited to sing the Marseillaise for the 14 July celebrations in the Place de la Concorde.

The music on these CDs presents a cross-section of Jessye Norman's repertory, in German and French opera, in Lieder and mélodie, in oratorio and even operetta. Since Wagner's Tannhäuser provided Jessye Norman with her first stage role, it is appropriate to begin with two arias from that opera. Senta's ballad from Der fliegende Holländer tells the story of the Flying Dutchman, who is condemned to sail the seas for eternity unless he can find a woman who will remain faithful unto death. The Wesendonck- Lieder were composed by Wagner in 1857–8 as a tribute to Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his friend Otto; particularly in 'Im Treibhaus' and 'Träume', they look forward to Tristan und Isolde. The three Schubert songs, and the solo from Brahms's German Requiem, bring the German part of the programme to a rapturous conclusion.

From Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann Jessye Norman sings the role of Giulietta, a Venetian courtesan, who ruins the hero, Hoffmann, by urging him to take part in a duel, and then in a symbolic gesture demands from him the ultimate sacrifice – the gift of his reflection. 'The face that launched a thousand ships' – Helen of Troy in La Belle Hélène – is another kind of temptress, and shows the full extent of Norman's comic gifts. In the song cycles by Ravel and Poulenc we glimpse a different side of the artist. La Fraîcheur et le feu was composed in 1950 for the baritone Pierre Bernac, Poulenc's greatest interpreter; in the 1960s, Bernac gave many master-classes covering the whole world of French song, and Jessye Norman was one of his students. The poems set are entitled Vue donne vie (‘Sight gives life'), but Poulenc asked the author, Paul Eluard, to give him a new title for the song-cycle. 'Unis la fraîcheur et le feu' is the opening line of the fifth song: 'Unite the coolness and the fire'. That is exactly what Jessye Norman has always done, and – in Bernac's words – she has done it with 'profound humanity'.

An intriguing, evocative and exotic recital in which Janet Baker joined The Melos Ensemble for a journey through some of the twentieth century's most alluring French compositions for voice and chamber ensemble.

"A most beautiful recital... in (Chausson's Chanson perpetuelle) Baker expands and exultingly finds herself most at home. It's a strong, highly effective performance and marks a measure of the extraordinary way in which she has mastered the always rather special art of singing in French... The contributions by members of the Melos Ensemble - the Hurwitz Quartet, the flutes of Richard Adeney and William Bennett, Gervase de Peyer and Stephen Trier playing clarinet, Lamar Crowson (piano) and, very important, the harp playing of Osian Ellis - are of superlative quality." Gramophone.

Through this second volume of secular music, the Ensemble Aedes continues their exploration of a cappella choral 20th and 21st centuries. In the wake of the first record (EL1128), they have selected 7 cycles where the word, its sound, and space for play and imagination are at the centre of the musical creation.

Eclecticism is thus once again put forward: amidst William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke and Guillaume Apollinaire, we find William Shakespeare and Paul Eluard or anonymous texts bequeathed by the people and traditions from medieval England or Moravian folklore, and a cycle which the writer is none other than the composer himself. This disc also illustrates how culture and literary tradition of a country can shape, inspire, influence and sometimes dictate a mode of songwriting and vocal, especially when the composer appropriates a language that is not his own. Sacred texts, like secular texts, are treated as madrigals depicting human passions. This cycle invokes the last two volumes that will complete this series.

When he sadly died earlier this year, the great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau left behind an amazing legacy of recordings. This CD features three relative rarities by French composers from the turn of the 20th century: La Bonne Chanson op. 61 by Gabriel Fauré, the Chansons Madécasses by Maurice Ravel, and Le Bal Masqué by Francis Poulenc.

The music is performed by Fischer-Dieskau with eleven soloists from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, including the violinist Thomas Brandis, flautist Karlheinz Zöller, and the clarinettist Karl Leister. The pianist is Wolfgang Sawallisch, who although a highly regarded instrumentalist in his own right, is particularly renowned as one of the leading conductors of the time.

The American baritone Barry McDaniel was one of the outstanding singers of the post-war era. As a successful opera singer and Lieder interpreter, he enjoyed a long and eventful career, both in Germany and abroad. Despite numerous performances and many recordings for radio and television, he nonetheless remained largely unnoticed by the media, partly because his name almost vanished in the shadow of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who was five years his senior. Unjustly so, since the two singers were equals as artists, albeit with different characters. Today, Barry McDaniel is hardly mentioned in specialist literature and one searches in vain for CDs since, until now, recordings from radio archives have not been phonographically processed. However, Audite now presents a première double CD of Lieder sung by Barry McDaniel. These studio recordings from the archives of Radio Berlin-Brandenburg (formally Sender Freies Berlin) were made between 1963 and 1974 with Hertha Klust and Aribert Reimann as accompanists.

This selection of songs by Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Duparc, Ravel and Debussy reveals diverse facets of McDaniel’s artistic personality. His interpretations are characterised by an interleaving of knowledge and naivety, feeling and craftsmanship, expression and impeccable singing. Apart from his immaculate technique, his accent-free German is particularly remarkable.

Barry McDaniel moved from the USA to Germany in 1953 in order to further his studies. He then gave his first song recitals, together with Hermann Reutter, and later began a career as an opera singer. In 1961 he was engaged at the newly re-opened Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he remained for thirty-seven years. At the same time, he gave guest performances at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Frankfurt Opera and the Munich Opera Festival, as well as broadcasting for radio and television. In addition, Barry McDaniel gave numerous song recitals, for example in Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Hanover, Brunswick and Berlin, including, in the latter city, the first ever song recital at the newly built Philharmonie in 1963. Today, the 81-year-old baritone declares: “Whatever I sing, I have to believe in it.” That is exactly how these recordings sound.