Includes song(s) by Henri Duparc. Soloists: Paul Groves, Roger Vignoles.

The interpretation of the complete melodic works of Duparc, this absolute summit in the art of the Lied in the 19th century, calls for a rare mix of youth, experience, interiority and expressivity, in addition to a rare tessitura: a middle range voice in which the extremes are as pleasing as the middle register. Coming from Quebec, Michèle Losier, hitherto applauded on numerous North-American opera stages, impressed the 2008 edition of the Reine Elisabeth Singing Competition by her bewitching art of the recital. This enabled her to meet Daniel Blumenthal, a dream accompanist, and to risk this thrilling adventure in the beautiful hall of the Concertgebouw in Bruges. The result has disconcerting beauty and the added merit of enabling us to admire the lesser known melodies of this great genius, next to his universally celebrated masterpieces. Duparc, who stopped writing at thirty-nine (1884) and painfully survived himself for half a century, offers us the heart and soul of French Romanticism in this interpretation.

Homelands is a powerful album of classical art song about exile. Featuring Ian Bostridge, Jennifer France, James Atkinson, Wonsick Oh, and pianist Aron Goldin, who curated the project. The songs (include many favorites by Tchaikovsky and Faure) are on the theme of exile and yearning for home. A performance of Homelands at the Royal Academy of Music in London on World Refugee Day in June 2022, with Olivier Award, Bafta and Tony Award winning actor Sir Simon Russell Beal reading poems by Auden, Brecht and Carol Ann Duffy with ancient Hebrew and Chinese poetry raised over �200,000 for the 30 Birds Foundation, a charity that enabled 500 Afghan school girls to escape the Taliban and fly from Kabul to Canada.

Mezzo-soprano Hermine May and pianist Manuel Lange invite you into Wagner's world of Tristan and Isolde where insatiable yearnings are awakened, passions heightened and where the fervent desire to transcend reality finds supreme love beyond death in Liebestod.

Stuttgart-born mezzo-soprano Christina Baader has been a much sought-after musician for many years, not only as an opera singer and soloist, but is also an internationally successful visual artist. To mark the 100th anniversary of Gabriel Faure's death, Christina Baader and Gert Hecher, piano, are presenting an album by the title MONDE ET MYSTeRE with a selection of his songs as well as those by Henri Duparc, who also played a significant role in establishing an independent French art of song. The expressive songs are based on poems by famous French poets such as Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, Armand Silvestre, Theophile Gautier, Rene-Fran�ois Sully-Prudhomme and Jean Lahor. Together with Gert Hecher, a specialist in the restoration of historical keyboard instruments, two grand pianos from 1868 and 1879, respectively, from the famous erard piano manufactory in Paris, which at the time had a similar status to Steinway & Sons today, were chosen to best emphasize the different tonal and stylistic elements of the works of the two composers.

Malcolm Martineau follows up his acclaimed complete song collections of Poulenc and Faure with an album celebrating the solo songs of Henri Duparc, performed by an acclaimed roster of British singers – Dame Sarah Connolly, Huw Montague Rendall, Nicky Spence & William Thomas. An iconic figure in the world of French music – his songs described as being ‘imperfect...but works of genius’ by Ravel and ‘perfect’ by Debussy – Duparc only composed a handful of works during the first half of his life: following a nervous disorder in 1885 at age 37 he lived for a further 48 years, orchestrating and tinkering with his songs, but publishing nothing new.

Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau is recognized at the highest international level as one of the UK’s leading accompanists, performing worldwide alongside the world’s greatest singers and with a discography of over 100 albums, including a number of award-winning recordings.

REVIEW

With four singers in the line-up, there is plenty of vocal variety. The lion’s share of the songs is allotted to Sarah Connolly who still has her voice in fine fettle. She perhaps displays a wider vibrato than in past, but the tone is beautiful and her expressiveness is undiminished, and her high notes ring out gloriously. She is allotted seven songs, while her three male colleagues have three each. But we shouldn’t forget the fifth participant, Malcolm Martineau at the piano. His role is just as important as the singers’, since these songs are no mere melodies with accompaniments but rather dramatic or narrative scenes, where the piano sets the scene and propels the action forward. In that respect Duparc is Wagnerian in his approach. Obviously we focus on the singer, but the piano part mustn’t be suppressed. Malcolm Martineau shows that he is a born director and keeps the proceedings on a tight rein.

-- MusicWeb International