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Un Jour Si Blanc

François Couturier

Jazz - Released January 25, 2010 | ECM

The title of François Couturier's album, Un Jour Si Blanc, comes from a poem by Soviet filmmaker Andreï Tarkovsky, an artist with whom the pianist is fascinated and whose work was the inspiration for his entire 2006 album, Nostalghia: Song for Tarkovsky. The French pianist has devoted most of his career to jazz, but he obviously knows the classical repertoire well because in previous albums he has made musical references to composers as diverse as Pergolesi, Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Schnittke. That broad frame of reference gives his music an uncommon expressive scope, and the selections on this album offer an impressive stylistic and emotional range. It's possible to hear the influence of Messiaen in L'aube, Ligeti in the crystalline chromatic sections of the title track, and sultry hints of Piazzolla in Voyage d'hiver, but there is no sense of appropriation because the voice is always Couturier's own. His dazzlingly crisp technique gives him the freedom to explore and create pianistic figures that would be out of the reach of all but the most virtuosic players. In the more meditative pieces, he plays with a mesmerizing, unhurried serenity and flexibility; it almost feels like it's possible to hear him listening. Couturier can be heard quietly vocalizing in the more intense passages, but it's no distraction. The album should appeal to fans of both jazz and new classical music with a taste for the adventurous. ECM's sound is characteristically clean, clear, and immediate. © TiVo
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Schubert : Winterreise (Voyage d'hiver)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Classical - Released February 23, 2018 | Warner Classics

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Schubert: Voyage d'hiver

Victoire Bunel

Classical - Released January 12, 2024 | B Records

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Voyage intime

Sandrine Piau

Classical - Released February 3, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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No one can accuse soprano Sandrine Piau of ever resting on her laurels, and with this 2023 release, she began, in her late fifties, a new partnership with accompanist David Kadouch. It is a bit hard to tell what the theme is supposed to be all about. Only some of the songs are "intimes," and many are not about voyages; Piau also notes that some of the songs are about "the theme of people being snatched away from the land of the living," not an especially intimate concept. Best just to listen and take the songs one by one, and this will reveal not only strong performances but organizational principles the performers don't mention. The first part of the program is devoted to German lieder, the second to French mélodies (before a final return to Schubert), with one piano piece in each set. Piau is arguably the greatest French interpreter of German song, and her Schubert Erlkönig, D. 328, has nothing trite about it as she inhabits but doesn't make opera characters out of the three characters in the piece. Another "theme" is that Piau really makes songs by women her own. There is a group by Clara Schumann, with an excellent setting of Heine's Lorelei that owes something to Erlkönig but is in no way a knockoff, and a fine group by Lili Boulanger that fits Piau beautifully. Sample Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre rêve. Perhaps the Mignon songs do not fit her quite so well at this late date, but the heftier numbers by Liszt and Wolf more than make up for this. Yet another theme is that these are all songs that give the pianist a great deal to do, and Piau's interactions with Kadouch are sensitive and detailed enough to make one eagerly anticipate future collaborations. Superbly recorded by Alpha at the Teldex Studio in Berlin, the album made classical best-seller charts in early 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Schubert: Die Freunde von Salamanka, D. 326; Der Spiegelritter, D. 11

Edith Mathis

Classical - Released February 23, 2024 | Archiv Produktion

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Thomas Quasthoff in Verbier

Thomas Quasthoff

Classical - Released October 28, 2022 | Verbier Festival Gold

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Silent Dreams

Harriet Krijgh

Classical - Released October 1, 2021 | Universal Music, a division of Universal International Music BV

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Sérénade d'hiver

Les Éléments

Classical - Released November 18, 2022 | Mirare

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Les éléments invite you to a winter evening, best enjoyed by the fireside. This musical journey from the Middle Ages to the present day, features songs and poems celebrating winter, both it's festivals and it's coldness, in the intimacy of the a cappella choir. The great composers of the repertoire rub shoulders with new compositions, arrangements of traditional Christmas songs from the provinces of France specially commissioned for this program. Best enjoyed by the fireside. © Mirare
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Le Voyage d'Hiver

Franz Schubert

Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released September 16, 2008 | Analekta

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Beffa: De l'autre côté du mirroir

Karol Beffa

Classical - Released October 11, 2019 | Indésens

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Les voix de la poésie

Chanson Plus Bifluorée

French Music - Released March 7, 2011 | Epm

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Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work

Jun Märkl

Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos

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L'Emprise

Mylène Farmer

French Music - Released November 25, 2022 | Stuffed Monkey

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Im Freien

Zlata Chochieva

Classical - Released May 19, 2023 | naïve

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Reflet

Sandrine Piau

Classical - Released January 12, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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In a world of "singles," pursued even by classical music labels nowadays, here is a whole album that makes up a single, sublime musical utterance. Reflet is a follow-up, similarly concerned with light effects, to soprano Sandrine Piau's German-language Clair-Obscur of a few years back. The German songs might have been a bigger stretch for Piau than the French material here, but Reflet has possibly an even more sublime coherence. One feels that every note is almost foreordained as the program opens with classic orchestral songs from Berlioz, Henri Duparc, and the less common Charles Koechlin, proceeding into darker, more mysterious realms with Ravel's Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, and ending with the youthful ebullience of Britten's Quatre chansons françaises. An illustration of how carefully calibrated everything is here comes with two Debussy pieces, Clair de lune and "Pour remercier la pluie" (from the Six Épigraphes Antiques), arranged for orchestra from other media. These serve as entr'actes between the sections of Piau's program, and they should by all rights have been annoying: aren't there enough genuine orchestral pieces that could have filled the bill? But just listen. These fit into the patterns that run through the whole album, and they make perfect sense, just like everything else. Piau's voice is delicate, soaring, and richly beautiful; one of the miracles of the current scene is its durability and versatility. Her support from conductor Jean-François Verdier, leading the Victor Hugo Orchestra, is confidently smooth, never intruding on the spell Piau weaves. A magnificent orchestral song recital that made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

Samuel Hasselhorn

Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released September 22, 2023 | harmonia mundi

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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
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Schubert Revisited: Lieder Arranged for Baritone and Orchestra

Matthias Goerne

Classical - Released January 6, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Pianist Alexander Schmalcz has performed alongside many famous singers during his career and is also a talented arranger. At the request of Matthias Goerne, he orchestrated Schubert’s lieder in the spirit of similar works by Berlioz, Reger, Liszt and Webern. Matthias Goerne has performed these orchestrations in numerous concerts, both in Europe and in New York, as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival.Schmalcz’s arrangements are both rigorous and conscientious. They’re perfect for Matthias Goerne’s dark tone, which is particularly graceful on this recording made in October 2019 with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. Over the years, the German baritone’s voice has become even more well-rounded, finding deep golden bass tones.The orchestration gives these 20 lieder exceptional weight, further emphasised by the mellowness of the strings, the darkness of the trombones and the sometimes ominous use of the timpani. This orchestration plunges Schubert’s music into a romantic universe similar to lieder by Brahms and even Wolf, especially in Songs of the harpist (Gesänge des Harfners), The Erl-King (Erlkönig) and the famous lieder Death and the maiden (Der Tod und das Mädchen). The anachronism of these arrangements is magnified by the silky accompaniment of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Matthias Goerne’s stunning vocals. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Echo: Schubert, Loewe, Schumann & Wolf

Georg Nigl

Classical - Released May 5, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Schubert: Winterreise

Cyrille Dubois

Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released December 1, 2023 | NoMadMusic

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Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra

Munich Radio Orchestra

Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | BR-Klassik

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One might react to this album with initial annoyance and ask whether it is really necessary to hear orchestrated versions of Schubert's supremely pianistic songs. It may come as a surprise, then, to find that most of these Lieder with Orchestra were arranged by great composers. They include Benjamin Britten, Jacques Offenbach, and Max Reger, who took on the job because, he said, he hated to hear a piano-accompanied song on an orchestral program. Perhaps the most surprising name to find is that of Anton Webern, but his arrangements are not the minimal, pointillistic things one might expect; he wrote these arrangements as a way of studying Schubert's music, and they are quite straightforward. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish the arrangers simply by listening to the music; Schubert's melodic lines tend to suggest distinctive solutions. Perhaps Reger's are a bit more lush than the others, although his version of Erlkönig, D. 328, is one of the few numbers here that just doesn't work (there is no way to replicate the percussive quality of the accompaniment). As for the performances as such, Benjamin Appl is clearly an important rising baritone, and he has a wonderful natural quality in Schubert. An oddball release like this might seem an unusual choice for a singer in early career, but he contributes his own notes, and he seems to have undertaken the project out of genuine enthusiasm for the material. At the very least, he has brought some intriguing pieces out of the archives and given them highly listenable performances. The Munich Radio Orchestra, under the young Oscar Jockel, is suitably restrained and keeps out of Appl's way. This release made classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo