Download or listen to the best albums and artists of Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder

As the symbiosis between the art of the poet and that of the composer, the French mélodie became the jewel of the salons of the ‘Belle Époque’. By placing a string quartet and a piano around the singer, Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle, Lekeu’s Nocturne and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson oscillate between chamber musical intimacy and orchestral ambition. Alongside these famous pioneering pieces, this programme devised by the Palazzetto Bru Zane champions a return to the art of transcription, so popular in the nineteenth century, with the aim of expanding the repertory for voice, strings and piano in order to unearth some forgotten treasures. Hence Hahn, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, La Tombelle, Ropartz, Louiguy and Messager all appear in a programme whose guiding thread is the emotions of nocturnal abandonment: the charms of twilight, the trajectory of dreams, the terror of nightmare or the exhilaration of festive occasions. Alexandre Dratwicki has made these arrangements in the style of the nineteenth century. Appropriately enough, the programme ends with La Vie en rose, for this music offers a kaleidoscope of all the colours of human feeling. The texture of solo strings and piano sets Véronique Gens’s incomparable storytelling artistry in a new ligh. © Alpha Classics

Two centuries ago Die Schöne Mullerin founded the German romanticism. Since then, the great story of this young man and its tragic and poetic love keeps all its emotionnal strengh: this heart touching version recorded live in the Théâtre de l’Athénee in Paris renews the Schubert masterpiece thanks to Thomas Oliemans vibrating voice and the sensitive touch of Malcolm Martineau. © B Records

The mystery of the ballad comes from the way it is told.’ (Goethe). Epic to the point of hallucination, this genre calls for skill in narrative, word-painting, evocation. And it is as a peerless storyteller that Stéphane Degout tackles this repertory which the German Romantics raised to unequalled heights. Who would have believed, before listening to this disc, that a French baritone could pay such eloquent tribute to the language of Goethe? © harmonia mundi

After the very recent publication by tenor Nicolas Phan and pianist Myra Huang, this is another album dedicated to sisters Lili and Nadia Boulanger that sheds more light on their talent. If Lili Boulanger’s work has been starting to emerge from obscurity in recent years, that of her sister Nadia’s has remained largely unknown, partly her own fault as she stopped writing after the premature passing of her sister, whose talent for writing she thought was superior. Nadia Boulanger instead forged a name for herself through education and the discovery of new works. This new recording produced in 2018 by the Cyrille Dubois and Tristan Raës duo in the enchanting Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice presents an altogether different programme and is opposite to the previous publication: with an emphasis on Nadia. There are nine of her melodies on offer here, as well as the Heures claires cycle that she wrote for four hands with pianist-composer Raoul Pugno to whom she was very close. The Quatre chants by Lili Boulanger reflect the infinite sadness which permeates the entire catalogue, small though it may be but intensely expressive nonetheless. Two new figures of French music in the wake of Gabriel Fauré that are rising in prominence. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Her constant simpering and extravagance could irritate or even dominate some of listeners. What’s for certain is Patricia Petibon will not leave anyone indifferent, and this album won’t be the one to stop the divisive opinions. Dedicated to the themes of love, death and the sea, this record takes us to twenty-two different ports of call by means of different poets and musicians who have covered one or all of the three. It’s composer/naval officer Jean Cras that leads us along the journey in the long run, where styles and time periods intersect and complement each other. Fauré stands shoulder-to-shoulder with John Lennon, Poulenc with Yann Tiersen. This welcome eclecticism contains a few real gems, like Le chant des lendemains, a melody composed by Thierry Escaich on a poem by Olivier Py who sings in a duet with Patricia Petibon. On the piano, Susan Manoff is the smiling accompanist of this quirky singer who likes to shatter any expectations of what a musical recital should be. Alongside her, David Venitucci on the accordion, Ronan Lebars on the Uilleann pipes and Philippe Marchand aka Yula S. on percussion bring colour to the ensemble, without forgetting Petibon’s guttural cries and the marine sound effects of cormorants and waves. More real than nature. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The author of a famous Toccata for Organ which overshadowed the rest of his œuvre, this Belgian composer Joseph Jongen has left behind an abundant catalogue of over 137 works. Born in Liège in 1873, his musical studies were crowned with the Belgian "Grand Prix de Rome", which allowed him to travel across Europe in search of the new musical currents of the era. Melody is the unbroken thread running through his life. It was in melodic music that he started out with composition at the age of 18; he would continue to compose melodies until 1948, when his mental powers began to slowly decline. Among the 55 melodies that he left behind, we can discern three periods. First, the period of French Romanticism, born of Massenet, using some rather old-fashioned verses by Armand Silvestre, very much a poet of his time, who had inspired Bizet, Chabrier, Delibes, Fauré and Messager. Jongen's style changes and becomes more personal in the era of the "Prix de Rome"; and it becomes fully mature around the time of his English exile, which lasted throughout the First World War. It's this intimate journey that is offered here, in a very delicate treatment by soprano Sarah Defrise and pianist Craig White. © François Hudry/Qobuz

A scribe of Schubert’s lieder, piano virtuoso, composer of powerful symphonic works, a precursor to modern music which would blossom at the start of the twentieth century, Franz Liszt is also the author of many lieder and other melodies. This great European traveller spoke many different languages, never holding back from putting German romanticism to music through the words of Heine, Schiller, Rellstab or Goethe, the French smoothness of Victor Hugo or the perfect language of Petrarch’s Sonnets in Italian. At 35 years old, the French tenor Cyrille Dubois already has a long career behind him. A young singer in the Caen children’s choir in Normandy, he started his solo career at the age of 12, playing Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at the Opéra de Lyon, before joining the Opéra de Paris’ Atelier Lyrique program in 2010. He has since performed on various international stages. His accompanist Tristan Raës studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning several prizes, including that of Anne Le Bozec’s accompaniment class. The two musicians that make up Duo Contraste met for the first time over ten years ago during their studies. Driven by a passion for melody which they admirably deliver, they have dedicated themselves to this repertoire with a skilful blend of simplicity and clarity, as well as a remarkable sense of nuance and expression all while avoiding any over-exaggerated sentimentality. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious "Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs" in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha Classics for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of Lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to ‘tell a story’ for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because ‘they are genuine operas in just a few minutes... mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom’. Among the great poets present here are Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine. As to the composers, alongside the indispensable Schubert and Schumann, this programme presents a great master of the genre, Carl Loewe, who wrote several hundred ballads: the works recorded here, inspired by Scots poems or Danish legends, are especially eloquent. There is also a chance to discover the much more rarely recorded Adolf Jensen, a great admirer of Wagner, whom he met in 1861: ‘To translate Wagner’s ideas of Beauty and Truth to smaller forms has been my aim in all my later compositions’. © Alpha Classics

Baritone Peter Mattei has been known mostly for operatic appearances, and somewhat in choral music. You might not expect him to excel in lieder, or you might expect him to give operatically inflected performances of art song. As it happens, none of these cautions apply, although Mattei does certainly give dramatic readings of Schubert's emotionally grim song cycle, he doesn't overflow beyond the intimate boundaries of the songs. Indeed, one of the most attractive features of this cycle is that the range, both physical and expressive, of Die Winterreise, D. 911, is that Mattei's voice seems perfectly matched to it: he is relaxed, is easily on top of small details, and gives a sense, honed by live performances, of inhabiting the song cycle's wandering protagonist. His voice is unusually attractive and well preserved; Mattei came on the scene in the early 1990s, and his career has developed slowly but steadily since then, carefully considering the treatment of the singer's voice. One distinctive feature of this recording is the highly restrained work of accompanist Lars David Nilsson. You might find it a plus: he gives room for Mattei's subtly shaped lines, or you might find that it drains life from the music, or a bit of both. Sample the intense "Auf dem Flusse," where the breaking of the ice/emergence of strong emotion elicits barely a rumble from the pianist. BIS contributes excellent sound from a studio in Mattei's hometown of Piteå in northern Sweden. A significant and committed Winterreise. © TiVo

The grace and natural charm of her iridescent, silvery soprano voice was inescapable: Edith Mathis shaped the Mozart sound of her time. But her performances of the Bach passions, Haydn oratorios, as Ännchen in Weber’s Der Freischütz or as Sophie in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier were met with equal enthusiasm. She also set the benchmark as a song recitalist, including in the summer of 1975 in her home city of Lucerne. © Audite

The reissue of the recordings made in 1978 and 1988 pays tribute to the unforgettable Czech tenor Vilém Přibyl's superb performance of three extraordinary Czech song cycles. The artist dazzled several generations of music-lovers in Bedřich Smetana's and Leoš Janáček's operas. His professional career was mainly connected with Brno, where he lived and worked for three decades. Moreover, Přibyl performed as a guest at the National Theatre in Prague, and he also impressed audiences in Edinburgh, London (Royal Opera House), as well as in France, Italy and the USA. The three song cycles are deemed to be the best works in the genre created by Smetana, Dvořák and Janáček. They are fundamentally different in terms of inspiration. While in his short cycle Evening Songs Smetana sumps up his lifelong endeavours and experiences, Dvořák's Biblical Songs represent the composer's intimate prayer and thanksgiving. In The Diary of One Who Disappeared, Janáček' depicts the story of a village boy who madly falls in love with a beautiful gypsy girl. The benchmark historical albums are as enchanting today as they were decades ago. © Supraphon

Presented on CD for the first time and newly remastered, a pair of Romantic Lieder recitals by the Welsh contralto who inherited the mantle of Kathleen Ferrier.The history of British contraltos on record, stretches back to Constance Shacklock and before her Dame Clara Butt but it was Ferrier who defined the sound of that voice type for millions of listeners around the world. Produced as if from a great distance, noble and yet communicating the most profound and immediate of emotions, the possessors of a true contralto voice inspired Handel, Elgar and others to compose some of their most heartfelt arias. It was with the music of Handel that the Welsh contralto, Helen Watts, made her debut on record: in performances of ‘Semele’ and ‘Sosarme’ recorded by L’Oiseau-Lyre, released in 1955 and reissued by Eloquence. Along with Alfred Deller and William Herbert, Watts counts among those British singers discovered by the founder of L’Oiseau-Lyre, Louise Hanson Dyer, in her search the young and talented musicians who could breathe new life into old and mostly unfamiliar music. Her career burgeoned, on disc and especially on the concert platform where she became the alto soloist of choice for countless performances of ‘Messiah’ and ‘The Dream of Gerontius’. Watts was also an accomplished recitalist and her gifts in this area have often been overlooked. This release compiles the first two song recitals she recorded, in 1963 and 1964. In the world of Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe und -Leben’ she enters intimately into each song’s shades of feeling and she brings a special passion to the three Mignon songs of Hugo Wolf. The earlier recital, couples more Schumann – notably the late and haunted ‘Five Songs of Mary Stuart’ – with favourite Lieder of Brahms such as ‘Ständchen’ and the Op. 91 pair with obbligato viola (Cecil Aronowitz). The anthology is completed with more Brahms, the Alto Rhapsody she recorded in Geneva with Ernest Ansermet in 1965: solemn, yet warm and deeply human, a perfect testament to her art and to the praise of her modern counterpart, Nathalie Stutzmann: ‘an extraordinary contralto’. (© Decca Music Group Limited / Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd.)

Born in a small Norwegian village in 1987 (and is thus inevitably compared to her long-time compatriot Kirsten Flagstad), soprano Lise Davidsen was almost built to embody Wagnerian and Straussian heroines. For her first record under the label Decca, with whom she has signed an exclusive contract, she has chosen to present several facets of femininity in the vocal stylings of Elisabeth (Tannhäuser), Ariane (Ariane à Naxos) and… Pauline. Pauline being Richard Strauss’ beloved wife to whom he dedicated many Lieder from his opus 27 - the 1894 cycle offered to his wife as a wedding gift - until the last Vier letzte Lieder in 1948.Under the supple baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonic Orchestra embraces the brassy voice of the Norwegian soprano with finesse and elegance. As you will see, this record, with its carefully devised programme, oscillates between youth and old age, in the presence of ghosts and death. You may wonder how one can express mortality at just 30 years old with such a powerful timbre, radiant health and a whole life ahead of you. The answer lies in Lise Davidsen’s voice, which upsurges as if it were a promise of immortality, the music of the last Strauss piece returning one last time to its past, to a Europe in ruins.Discovered in 1984, after the death of the singer and dedicatee Maria Jeritza, Malven (“The Mallows") is Richard Strauss’ true “last song”. Lighter in tone than the Vier letzte Lieder to which it might have belonged, it is presented here in an orchestration by Wolfgang Rihm. © François Hudry/Qobuz