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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 : Winterreise (Voyage d'hiver)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Classical - Released February 23, 2018 | Warner Classics

Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Schubert - 50 of the Best

Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra

Classical - Released June 11, 2013 | Naxos Special Projects

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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

Brigitte Fassbaender

Classical - Released January 1, 2002 | Warner Classics

Schubert knew madness. He knew it to the depths of his soul and feared it. And out of his fear he wrote the greatest monument to love lost, to death lost, to madness found. He wrote Die Winterreise, the most hopeless art work ever conceived by the despairing mind of man.Speaking of madness, is Brigitte Fassbaender nuts? A woman singing Winterreise? Although it could be argued that women are capable of experiencing the emotions of Schubert's cycle, a woman interpreting those oh-so-macho emotions is hard for most men to believe. "Nevertheless," as Galileo said, "it moves." "Can a woman interpret those emotions?" is an absurd question. Lotte Lehmann did so, and did so superbly more than 50 years ago. But, to answer the question "is Brigitte Fassbaender nuts?" the answer is "yeah, d'you've a problem with that?" After all, aside from the singer's gender and other pointless concerns, what's the most important psychological characteristic a human being needs to sing Winterreise? He/she has to be crazy or at least act the part. Fassbaender may not be crazy, but she can act. More to the point, she can act and sing and thereby convince, no, compel belief in her audience. Fassbaender's is one of the great Winterreises.© TiVo
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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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Schubert: Winterreise

Mark Padmore

Classical - Released January 19, 2018 | harmonia mundi

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Recorded in the Mennonite (Anabaptist) church in Haarlem, the Netherlands, this recording unfolds in very reverberant acoustic surroundings, giving it a slightly unreal aura that is perfectly suited to the sad, timeless poems of Wilhelm Müller's Winter Journey (Winterreise) set to music by Franz Schubert.Whether it's a dream or a nightmare, the overwhelming density of Schubert's message calls for artists who can embody this hopeless solitude. Mark Padmore had already recorded the cycle with Paul Lewis playing a modern piano. Kristian Bezuidenhout's personality, and his Viennese pianoforte, and Mark Padmore's light tenor voice (probably close to the one in which Schubert sang this cycle) give these pages an even more touching gravity, as they take aim at the prime of youth.The complicity and the mutual listening between the singer and the pianoforte form the basis of these two artists' work. The perceptible affectation in the singer's art is tempered by the simplicity and unfailing support of the pianoforte accompaniment. Here, this surprising romantic wandering takes on unusual and disconcerting resonances, opening up unsuspected horizons. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Hans Hotter - Gerald Moore

Hans Hotter

Classical - Released January 1, 1987 | Warner Classics

Distinctions The Qobuz Ideal Discography
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Le voyage d'Andrin IV : L'hiver en haut du monde

La Rioule des Compagnons du Monde

Folk/Americana - Released December 22, 2023 | Indie

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Reflet

Sandrine Piau

Classical - Released January 12, 2024 | Alpha Classics

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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

Live au Cirque d'Hiver

Christophe Maé

French Music - Released March 18, 2022 | Parlophone (France)

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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
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Schubert: Schwanengesang

Andrè Schuen

Classical - Released November 18, 2022 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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After receiving huge praise for his debut album on Deutsche Grammophon, baritone Andrè Schuen continues his Schubert journey. Schubert's enigmatic final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, is the subject of Andrè Schuen and his longstanding accompanist Daniel Heide's second release for Deutsche Grammophon. Schuen calls Schwanengesang "my greatest love among the Schubert lieder. Especially the Heine settings; they move me the most!". © Deutsche Grammophon
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Wanderer Without Words

Juliette Journaux

Classical - Released September 29, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Chanson d'Amour

Sabine Devieilhe

Classical - Released September 11, 2020 | Warner Classics

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Sabine Devieilhe and Alexandre Tharaud bring their customary clarity, finesse and insight to the works of four composers who defined the path of French art song or "mélodie" from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. In an imaginatively balanced recital, the two French luminaries perform Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. Their programme, built around Ravel's Cinq Chansons populaires grecques and Debussy's Verlaine setting Ariettes oubliées, takes up the themes of love, war and death and offers both favourite songs like Fauré's Après un rêve and some rarer treasures. © Erato
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Voyage

Lavinia Meijer

Chamber Music - Released March 20, 2015 | Sony Classical

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It's been a while since someone has issued harp recitals that have consistently captured the public imagination, but harpist Lavinia Meijer has shown strong programming instincts in albums that have done just that. Voyage (the title referent is pretty general) is an excellent example. After recording several albums for Channel Classics, Meijer was signed to Sony and released an album of works by Ludovico Einaudi to popular acclaim but mixed critical reception. Here she has threaded classical and crossover styles together very nicely, mixing standard-fare harp arrangements of the likes of Clair de lune and Satie with selections from the Amélie soundtrack of French composer Yann Tiersen. From Satie to Tiersen, Meijer says, is a "short step." Maybe, but many listeners will experience the Tiersen pieces as moments of relaxation, of clarification of the denser textures and significations of the French repertory pieces. There is no doubt that Tiersen is an evocative melodist, and Meijer brings out the film's slightly nostalgic flavor of romantic comedy. Recording the harp is engineering's black belt, and those worried that Sony would not be able to match the legendary sonics of Channel Classics can set their minds at ease: Meijer's harp has a startling presence, and the balances in the pieces with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta are excellent. The booklet, featuring artwork by Jeroen Krabbé, is another plus. Strongly recommended.© 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