Grieg: Jeg Elsker Deg, Op. 41 No. 3

Some say love's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go around,

Some say that's absurd…

W.H. AUDEN

Charting the course of a love affair – in song – through the eyes of a young woman who begins by asking the universal question, Tell me the truth about love presents a programme of 19th and 20th century song.

The album takes its title from Benjamin Britten’s 1938 seductive setting of W.H. Auden’s amusing poem and tries to pin down and define the most elusive of human emotions.

The story takes us from love at first sight with Schumann’s Seit ich ihn gesehen, breathless with wonder and fervent reverance and Chausson’s Le charme which describes the quiver of excitement and the tender veneration the girl feels when the boy’s smile catches her unawares to Loewe’s Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht gluben to describe the lovers first encounter.

As the love story unfolds and the couple become closer, it is illustrated with music such as Strauss’s Nachtgang, Rachmaninov’s Midsummer nights and Bridge’s Adoration. However the magic is soon broken and Sunday brings deception and betrayal. The girl finds out that the young man does not love her and she bitterly awakes from her dream. The feeling of love lost is brought to life through Brahm’s Am Sonntag Morgen, Schubert’s Du liebst mich nicht and Kurt Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas.

As a postlude, Britten’s arrangement of Early one morning perfectly sums up the story of the young girl and the final message of ‘how could you use a poor maiden so?’ lingers in the ear.

Amanda Roocroft has secured an international reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting singers, in opera, concert and recital and Joseph Middleton enjoys a busy and varied career as a chamber musician and song accompanist.

Legendary soprano Kirsten Flagstad is featured on this super budget re-issue in 10 songs by Grieg, Dido’s lament from Purcell’s most famous opera and Wagnerian scenes from Tannhauser, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung .

“In the works by Grieg, we wanted there to be unity in the language. So To brune ojne and Jeg elsker dig, by the Danish poet Andersen, are sung in Norwegian. The songs of Op. 48, settings of various German poems, were translated by the poet Nordahl Rolfsen, who was a close friend of Grieg’s. And I have chosen to sing his translations of the two German poems, by Goethe and von Bodenstedt: En drøm (Ein Traum) and I rosentiden (Zur Rosenzeit). They are usually sung in German. In Grieg there is no tragedy, but instead a gentle Nordic melancholy.

In Sibelius, on the other hand, nature is brutal and love is passionate. Never has the personification of nature been as present as it is in these songs. Here, everything evokes the end of winter and the gushing waters of spring (Marssno, Men min fagel), betrayal (Se n har jag, Flickan kom ifran), despair and weariness with life, conveyed by the image of a rose tree growing in the heart (Svarta rosor); I thought it was interesting to include the song En slanda, in which the music, rather than the poem itself, evokes a dragonfly, symbolising the pleasures of life which come to distract the mind of a person who is lost in thought. The idea of completing this recording with Debussy’s very sensual evocations of amorous desire expressed in the three Chansons de Bilitis came quite naturally. Apparition is for me one of Mallarmé’s finest poems, and in his setting Debussy conveys perfectly the ecstatic yet unsettling feelings caused by love at first sight.

We chose to end this recording with Beau Soir. This infinitely gentle song invites us to contemplate nature and the natural cycle of water and of human life.” Karen Vourc’h

Karen Vourc’h studies with Christa Ludwig. In 2010, she will be Annina in Menotti's Saint of Bleeker Street at the Opéra de Marseille, Musetta at the Opéra de Monaco, Mélisande at the Opéra Comique, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and Vincenette (Mireille) at the Chorégies d' Orange. In March she shared the rôle of Emilie in Kaia Saariaho’s new opera, with Karita Mattila, to good reviews.

This month is an excellent one for Björling fans. This collection is a treasury of rare performances from the US and Sweden and includes previously unreleased material. There is commentary and interviews, as well as Art and popular songs, Arias and duets and there are many guest artists such as Licia Albanese, Anna Lisa Björling and Renata Tebaldi.