This 2023 release inaugurates an ongoing series from baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, performing Schubert works two centuries on from their date of composition, and slated to culminate in 2028, the bicentennial of the composer's death. The project begins with one of the most famous Schubert song cycles of all, Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795, depicting the crackup and despair of a young wanderer who falls in love with a beautiful miller's daughter. Hasselhorn has plenty of recent competition in this cycle; listeners can sample the 2017 recording by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber for another approach, but this one promises well for the ongoing project. Die schöne Müllerin is a work in which Schubert took vast strides toward the emancipation of the piano in the lied, and Bushakevitz leans into this aspect, with details that illuminate and often foreshadow themes developing in the text. Hasselhorn has a warm baritone with an appealing conversational tone that turns chilly and quiet toward the cycle's downer conclusion. Another draw is Harmonia Mundi's sound from the b-sharp studio in Berlin; the engineers put Bushakevitz just a bit forward in the mix, not so much as to sap energy from Hasselhorn's singing, but enough to highlight his perceptive performance. This release bodes well indeed for the duo's future work.© James Manheim /TiVo

Baritone Thomas Guthrie gets top billing, as is usual for the singer, on this recording of Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, but equally important is the ensemble Barokksolistene, contributing a string quintet and a pair of guitars as accompaniment to Schubert's familiar songs about the fair maid of the mill. The arrangements are by Guthrie, but this release was the product of a musical-theatrical presentation by Barokksolistene, a group that has tried, so to speak, to bring classical music back to the barrooms, with performances of Baroque music in pub-like settings. It is hard to evaluate the recording without the theatrical context; the backing group is different from the usual ones offered by Barokksolistene, and there is something of the flavor of two projects going at cross purposes. On the other hand, arrangements of all kinds were common in the 19th century, and even if a string quintet would be unlikely for an informal musicale, nothing here goes beyond the bounds of what is reasonable. Guthrie has an appealing baritone, and as an introduction to the undoubtedly experimental spirit of Barokksolistene, this album succeeds. It made classical best-seller charts in the holiday season of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

Ian Bostridge continues his new exploration of Schubert song cycles with a recording of Die schöne Müllerin, together with pianist Saskia Giorgini. Die schöne Müllerin (1823) was Schubert’s first song cycle, and simultaneously Bostridge’s first extended introduction to the Lied and all its wonders. Schubert initially conceived the cycle together with poet Wilhelm Müller as a party game among friends, but gradually got captivated by the profundity of this apparently naïve love story. Bostridge is equally fascinated by the way in which this playful, folk-inspired piece gradually transforms into a cosmic lullaby in the final lines of the last song ‘des Baches Wiegenlied’. For pianist Giorgini, the key to - but also the greatest challenge of - interpreting Schubert’s music, and particularly Die schöne Müllerin, lies in the oceanic experience and hypnotic power of repetition. © Pentatone

It's not entirely clear where Daniel Hope's 2020 album Hope@Home was recorded: the location, except for one track recorded at the Frauenkirche in Dresden, is given merely as "Berlin." If it was indeed recorded at the violinist's home, he has a space with an unusually live acoustic that is somewhat at odds with the impression of intimacy that he seeks to convey. That's one of the few complaints here, however, for Hope has, in many ways, made a virtue of necessity. His program is built around a long list of guests, as if in the manner of a home musical soirée, including both instrumentalists and singers. The pianist on the majority of the tracks is Christoph Israel, who also serves as arranger, and it is the variety of these that really makes the album. Hope manages to pull off the idea of having a large group of talented house guests experimenting at the piano, and this is not easy to do with a convincing quality of spontaneity. Consider the unusual combination of Falla's "Asturiana" with Rudyard Kipling's poem "If," spoken by Iris Berben, or a yet more unexpected America the Beautiful. The main sequence of the program consists of a mix of classical (Schubert and Brahms) and popular American, British, and continental European songs. It may be calibrated to appeal to varied audiences, but it is relaxed, fun, often ingenious, and quite lovely.© James Manheim /TiVo

German baritone Christian Gerhaher and his accompanist/partner-in-creativity Gerold Huber have risen to the top of the heap in primary lied repertory, and it is easy to see why. In their second turn through Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, Gerhaher could simply have applied his golden baritone, and everybody would have been happy. Instead, he steps into character and conveys the unsettled psyche of the cycle's frustrated protagonist. He may gain strength at times, whereupon the famed Gerhaher sound comes through, but the cycle has a convincing dramatic arc that ends in unhappiness and weakness. Sample Trockne Blumen toward the end for the full range. Another Gerhaher innovation here is the inclusion of unset poems, recited by Gerhaher at the beginning, at the end, and along the way. This both breaks the tension and provides a more complex context to the whole sequence, and it's certainly something that one can imagine Schubert and his friends doing in their chambers. The booklet of the CD version has more on Schubert, Müller, and their orbit. A masterful, extremely satisfying remaking of some famous songs, and a Die schöne Müllerin that elevates the cycle to the level of Die Winterreise, D. 911.© TiVo

Renowned performers Iestyn Davies and Joseph Middleton perform Schubert's tragic song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin. Adapting poetry by Wilhelm Müller, the genesis of D. 795 marks the beginning of the end of Schubert's life; he discovered that he had contracted syphilis sometime in late 1822 or early 1823, and it was in 1823 that he composed this tale of a poet-singer who dies in the aftermath of erotic experience. Released under the own label of St John's College, Cambridge, this recording acts as a celebration of Iestyn Davies's formative period at the college; beginning there as a 7-year-old probationer in 1987, he progressed to become Head Chorister, before ultimately returning to study as a choral scholar. Alongside full texts and translations, the booklet includes a background on the work by noted Lied expert Susan Youens, as well as reflections on Iestyn's time at St John's from the College's past and present Directors of Music – Christopher Robinson and Andrew Nethsingha. © Signum Classics

A serpent woman haunts Cecile McLorin Salvant's dreams on her boldly realized seventh album, 2023's Mélusine. Inspired by the European folktale most famously detailed by 14th century French writer Jean d'Arras, Mélusine tells the tale of a shapeshifting maiden, half-serpent/half-woman, whose righteous anger takes on ever-more dualistic meanings under Salvant's dynamic musical sway. Having been lavished with accolades, including several Grammy Awards for her clarion, swinging jazz and French chanson-infused albums, Salvant has increasingly leaned into the more stylistically experimental and personal aspects of her artistry. It was an approach she took to new levels with 2022's Ghost Song, performing her poetic originals alongside unexpected covers of songs by Kate Bush and Sting. Centered on the title track, which she composed during the Ghost Song sessions, Mélusine is a gorgeously realized production. Although there are some English lyrics here, the album features the most French Salvant has sung on record. Thankfully, she offers translations of each song with a sentence that also highlights how each track illuminates the story.The album also finds Salvant (who produced the album with Tom Korkidis) pulling together all of her disparate influences, from her moody cabaret jazz reading of Charles Trenet's "La Route Enchantee" to her playfully mischievous interpretation of the 14th century composition "Dites Moi Que Je Suis Belle," the latter of which is done in dancerly duet with djembe percussion master Weedie Braimah. Along with Braimah, she's joined throughout by several longtime associates including pianists Sullivan Fortner and Aaron Diehl, bassists Paul Sikivie and Luques Curtis, drummers Kyle Pool and Obed Calvaire, and saxophonist Godwin Louis. Shifting the line-up track to track, Salvant offers inspired forays into '70s sci-fi-inspired Canadian musical theater ("Petite Musique Terrienne" from Starmania), the dramatic French pop of Veronique Sanson ("Le Temps est Assassin"), and an Afro-Latin take on 12th century troubadour Almuc Castelnau's "Dame Iseut" that Salvant sings in both Occitan and Haitian Creole, languages that underline her own rich dual heritage. There's even a synthesizer-accented take on Michel Lambert's haunting 1660 air de coeur "D'un Feu Secret" that sounds like electronic composer Suzanne Ciani, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Modern Jazz Quartet giving a Baroque court performance. Her originals here are just as stylistically wide-ranging as she pulls together jazz and Haitian compas rhythms on "Doudou," accompanies herself on analog synth on "Wedo," and weaves a dreamy overlay of vocals and electric piano on "Aida." It almost goes without saying that Salvant's voice is utterly sublime on Mélusine, rich with an earthy jazz warmth on one song and shimmering with a brightly attenuated operatic resonance on another. There's also a feeling that for her, the story of a half-serpent half-woman is in keeping with her life as a Black woman raised in Miami by a Haitian father and French mother. Whether it's with the themes of romantic heartbreak and bodily autonomy, or the global boundary-pushing musicality at play on Mélusine, Salvant's work is transcendent.© Matt Collar /TiVo

This double-album release from the specialist Palazzetto Bru Zane label, better known for opera but doing fine here with orchestral music, landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, and this is really no wonder. The album puts together many attractive features, beginning with fine work from the beefy (34 violins) Orchestre National de Lyon under conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. The album comprises a little history of the French tone poem from the third quarter of the 19th century to the second decade of the 20th, and it includes many works that will be unfamiliar to all but specialists, along with a few hits (Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre, Op. 40, Paul Dukas' L'apprenti sorcier ["The Sorcerer's Apprentice"] in a brisk, colorful performance, Emmanuel Chabrier's España, and perhaps Franck's Le chasseur maudit). As for the rest, there are no fewer than four works by women composers: Lili Boulanger, Augusta Holmès, Mel Bonis, and Charlotte Sohy; the Danse mystique of the latter is perhaps both the most obscure and the most compelling. Several works by better-known male composers also seem well worth removal from the historical scrap heap; sample Ernest Chausson's hushed Viviane, Op. 5, or Vincent d'Indy's Istar, Op. 42, the tone poem Wagner never wrote. Or the title work by Henri Duparc, much more familiar as a song composer. More generally, one is impressed by the cohesion of the program as a whole, even as French styles underwent fundamental change. Most of the composers try to show a mastery of the large orchestra and of the big tune as second subject. This is a highly listenable group of pieces that hearers will be glad to know better.© James Manheim /TiVo

The main attraction of the orchestra Les Siècles and its conductor François-Xavier Roth is its use of period instruments from around 1900, the time period in which the group specializes. One could hardly ask for a better demonstration record (as audiophiles used to call them) than this take on Maurice Ravel's L'Heure espagnole, an edgy, rather tawdry but undeniably funny little opera about the extramarital escapades of a clockmaker's wife, complete with excellent satirical characterizations of her two lovers. The opera receives a pitch-perfect performance here from a quintet of younger singers, who deliver the kind of dry, close-to-spoken singing Ravel wanted. Even better, though, is the orchestral sound, where the opera's large contingent of winds, brass, and percussion displays the sound of Les Siècles at its most vivid. The score calls for trios of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, and these all have a tangier sound than modern instruments provide. The program ends with Boléro, and this, too, stands out from among the hundreds or thousands of other recordings on the market. Ravel had very fixed ideas about how he wanted the work to sound, and he wrangled with Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the premiere in New York, about it: it should be played absolutely straight, with no variation in tempo and little expression. Notwithstanding the connotations that became attached to the work later on, he viewed it as an abstract work, and that is exactly what it becomes in Roth's bracing reading. Listeners who have been wanting to sample Roth's work with this orchestra are enthusiastically encouraged to try this release, which made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo