Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder

For the first four years of their marriage, Robert and Clara Schumann kept a joint diary, a project which Robert described as "a record of our wishes and our hopes, and the means whereby we may convey to one another any requests we may have to make, for which words may not suffice...". In the imaginative recital "Album für die Frau", Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton combine songs by both composers into something similar – the depiction of a relationship seen through the eyes of both parties. Using the eight songs from Robert’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben to poems by Adalbert von Chamisso as the framework, they add songs as well as some piano solos in order to create a fuller and more complex picture. The result seems to suggest that the experiences of our "Frau" are richer than Chamisso and Robert Schumann imagined: while love, marriage and motherhood dominated much of Clara Schumann’s life, Robert’s death in 1856 signaled the start of a four-decade widowhood during which she resumed her stellar career as a pianist. As a team, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have released a number of acclaimed discs, including "Fleurs", featuring flower-themed songs by composers from Purcell to Richard Strauss and Britten, "A Verlaine Songbook", exploring settings of the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and "A Soprano’s Schubertiade", a Schubert anthology. © BIS Records

If the global pandemic allows it, the young baritone Andrès Schuen is expected in Papageno (The Magic Flute) at the Vienna Opera in spring 2021. He will be Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in the summer of the same year, and then Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte) at the Salzburg festival.Hailing from the Italian Tyrol, close by Austria, Andrès Schuen has a solid CV. He studied song under Wolfgang Holzmair and Brigitte Fassbaender, and lieder under Daniel Heide. It is the latter that he has chosen again as a partner for this new album dedicated to the Schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller) by Franz Schubert after the great success of their album Wanderer released in 2018.His fine, youthful and manly timbre works wonders throughout this cycle. It is a voyage through the joy and hope of youth, a joy soon tarnished by the cruel disillusionments of life. In the manner of an actor, and above all, a storyteller, Schuen gradually goes from laughter to tears and resignation. His style is unaffected, with a probity and simplicity that pleases. Accustomed to the Schubertiades of his neighbouring Schwarzenberg which he often visits, Andrès Schuen is supported by the attentive but somewhat matte piano playing of Daniel Heide, specialist in lieder and accompanist to the greatest voices of the day. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Nearly every setting of the poems by Kerner, Chamisso, Andersen and Heine heard in this recital dates from 1840, the year Schumann found himself totally engrossed with the song genre, producing no fewer than 138 individual lieder. This creative vein seems to mirror the inner torments that gripped the young composer at the time, while revealing the extraordinary range of his musical invention and unequalled talent of storyteller, as Samuel Hasselhorn demonstrates here, after winning first prize at the 2018 Queen Elisabeth Competition: the young German baritone’s first recording for harmonia mundi is a veritable love letter to this most intimate of art forms. © harmonia mundi

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

Sandrine Piau invites us for a stroll through the heart of romantic French melody with the musicians of the Concert de la Loge playing on period instruments. Known at the beginning of her career as a prominent performer of Baroque song, Sandrine Piau admits that she was nourished by 19th and 20th-century French music from an early age, at a time when she dreamed of becoming a harpist. Palazzetto Bru Zane are therefore going back to their roots, co-producing this album with the Alpha Classics label. Most of the tracks on this album are real discoveries, like these exquisite mini-works by Massenet, Pierné, Dubois, Godard or Guilmant. And what a wonderful idea to have also slipped the real gem that is Aux étoiles between these melodies, the short night-time instrumental that Henri Duparc wrote in 1910. Almost blind, the composer had dictated the orchestration to the very young Ernest Ansermet, who created it shortly afterwards, conducting the Montreux Kursaal Orchestra. A departure from the usual piano accompaniment, these melodies take on an additional grace and elegance in their orchestral setting, under the subtle and diaphanous direction of Julien Chauvin. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Snow White sings Canteloube, accompanied by the composer : a rare and newly remastered album, transferred to CD on Decca, from the original master tapes, for the first timeAs R.J. Stove outlines in a new essay for this important Eloquence release, Lucie Daullène (b.1931) was nearer 19 than (as the legend has it) 15 years old in 1949-50 when she recorded an album of ‘Chants de France’ for L’Oiseau-Lyre. Her voice, all the same, is so light, fresh and uncoloured by finesse that one may readily hear why Canteloube thought she was ideal. ‘That’s how French folk songs should be sung,’ he once wrote. Though Daullène made only one more classical recording, she later achieved a measure of fame (now named Dolène) as the voice of Disney’s heroine. ‘Snow White’. in the dubbed French version of the movie. At the piano, the septuagenarian Canteloube tosses off scales, arpeggios and glissandi with a panache enviable by many players one-third of his age. He had gathered the songs themselves from Brittany to Corsica and many points in between and none of them reappear in the more familiar ‘Chants d’Auvergne’, even though Daullène herself was a native of the region, making this new release all the more appealing to anyone already captivated by Canteloube. The ‘bonus’ here is more familiar but still undervalued: the first complete recording of ‘Les Nuits d’été’, made in 1953, at a time when Berlioz was still known for little more than the ‘Symphonie fantastique’, even in France. It was sung by the Belgian soprano, Suzanne Danco with a natural linguistic ease and the technical qualities so prized the composer, Luigi Dallapiccola: ‘control, breathing, technique, and intonation … balanced so perfectly that one cannot even perceive them as separate’. Danco’s interpretation remains a landmark in the cycle’s discography. (© Decca Music Group Limited / Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd.)

Julian Prégardien decided to record the Dichterliebe cycle after he came across the new Bärenreiter edition; he went on to explore the work in concerts with his constant accompanist, Eric Le Sage, inserting other works by Robert and also by Clara Schumann, whose bicentenary is celebrated in 2019. When Clara played the Dichterliebe in the 1860s, she used to slip extracts from Kreisleriana between the songs. Prégardien asked Eric Le Sage to record the same extracts on a Blüthner piano of 1856, the year of Robert’s death, and also to include Romances composed by both Robert and Clara at a time when their future marriage was still uncertain. The sublime ballade Löwenbraut also forms part of the programme – a reminder of the young Robert’s anguish on Clara’s departure. At Julien’s suggestion, Sandrine Piau was invited to sing three duets: a simple Canon composed by Clara, and two duets by Robert, Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär, and the sublime In der Nacht. Four further songs complete the recording: Sängers Trost, a short piece in belcanto style; Kurzes Erwachen, composed by Robert at the age of just eighteen; Aus den hebräischen Gesängen, a very melancholy song; an extract from the cycle Myrthen (Robert’s wedding present to Clara); and Mein Wagen rollet langsam, a song that was included in the composer’s first version of Dichterliebe. The Dichterliebe songs micht have been expected to show Schumann triumphantly rejoicing in that year of 1840 when he was finally able to marry Clara; and yet they are characterised by bitter irony, nostalgic Sehnsucht, and a sense of dread… © Alpha Classics

On their first recital for harmonia mundi, soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac and pianist Pascal Jourdan perform music by three titans of the Romantic period. Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner each made decisive contributions to the evolution of the lied. Although not known as a song composer, Berlioz wrote more than fifty songs - many of them supreme examples of his unsurpassed gift for melody. His cycle Les Nuits d'été take on a completely different dimension when heard in their original setting for voice and piano. Wagner's five Wesendonck-Lieder are among the the most famous cycles in the history of the lied, and the Liszt selections heard here exemplify his supreme mastery of the genre. © harmonia mundi

By turns ecstatic and deeply depressed, as is the way with bipolar disorders, Hugo Wolf gave the world great and precious masterpieces in the genre of the lied with his great cycles, in particular Italienisches Liederbuch, for two voices, which represents the soul of the art. 46 lieder speak of love, focusing on the tangled feelings of man and woman across lovers' dialogues in ironic, gallant and impassioned tones. Written around words by Paul Heyse based on anonymous Tuscan poems, this collection is full of ballads, and in particular rispetti (compliments), folksy poems made up of two quatrains. The German translation seriously disfigures the light touch of the Italian original, especially as Hugo Wolf makes no attempt to "do Italian" in his compositions. “I assure you: a warm heart beats in the little chests of my youngest southern children, who, despite everything, cannot hide their German origins. Yes, their hearts beat in German, even though the sun shines in Italian", he told a friend. This Italian collection is made up of, as Stéphanie Goldet writes, "little love stories, moments of impatience or frustration, wishes and warnings, complaints and recriminations, demands and unconditional surrenders". Recorded in concert at the Hesse Philharmonic on 18 February 2018, this new recording ranks alongside other legendary records such as those by Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau; it will surely become a new reference point version. While it was reasonable to worry about Jonas Kaufmann's voice, we can hear that it has recovered all its strength and its thousand and one miraculous nuances. His partner, Diana Damrau, is radiant, with a song that brings together the many different emotions of a worried and sometimes mischievous young girl. But this dialogue would be nothing without the subtle and refined piano-playing of Helmut Deutsch, who has given these miniatures such an irresistible accompaniment. © François Hudry/Qobuz

As the first of a series of publications that aim to celebrate forty years of the "Arts Flo" founded by William Christie in 1979, this new album, recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2016, is made up of "serious songs and “drinking songs" from France in the 17th century. Following the filming of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, performed at the Salzburg Festival 2018, and the ambitious complete recording of Carlo Gesualdo’s Madrigaux conducted by Paul Agnew, who is little by little taking over as the ensemble’s conductor, new editions are returning towards harmonia mundi, the "historic" publisher of the Arts Florissants and their founder. This recording is a perfect “Map of Tendre” of the loved-up 17th century, with its lovelorn shepherds, pretty shepherdesses (jolies bergères, in fact!) who aren't always too chaste, and helpful birds. Having only just moved on from Renaissance polyphony, French composers, very much influenced by their Italian colleagues, produced airs de cour (courtly airs) which would become the first constitutive elements of French opera. This album brings together the composers who best represent this musical trend. It gives us Marc-Antoine Charpentier as well as Michel Lambert, who wrote serious melodies, and Sébastien Le Camus, who would quickly become one of the musical favourites of the Parisian salon scene. These men dominated the musical productions which then circulated in either printed or manuscript form, or in periodicals such as Le Mercure galant. What a happy time it was for France, when love, sincere love, always won out over adversity and jealousy. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Bernstein, Copland, Ives, Mahler, Strauss, Pärt, Duruflé, Messiaen, Martin, Liszt and Richard Rodgers: those are the composers honoured here by Anne Sofie von Otter, accompanied on the organ (which makes the album truly original, in addition to the eclectic repertoire) by Bengt Forsberg. A few fellow musicians join forces for a few pieces here and there; we find the violin, cello, harp, viola and even an electric guitar for Bernstein's Mass aria. A touching detail is that the organ used is that of St. James Church in Stockholm, the same church where a very young Anne Sofie first started singing, initially as a member of the choir, then quickly as a soloist, notably with St. John Passion. It was also in this church that she first performed as a soloist more than thirty-five years ago with none other than Bengt Forsberg. The programme alternates between English, German and French, with a touch of Latin for incursions into the sacred world. It ends with an almost improvised version of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from the musical The Sound of Music; indeed, Von Otter has been enjoying crossing the barriers between periods and genres for several years now. © SM/Qobuz

Very different from Schubert’s Lieder, which are chants according to German “popular” tradition (usually strophic) with a musical accompaniment subservient to the singing (taking nothing away from their incredible genius!), Schumann’s are, to use Christian Gerhaher’s words, “lyrical dramaturgy”; miniature operas in which the piano and vocals are equal in content. This doesn’t explain why Schumann’s Lieder are so rarely performed in concert, with the exception of some well-worn cycles (normally Myrten, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und –leben). Gerhaher and his pianist Gerold Huber pick works from the genre’s ample repertoire that have almost never been performed in concert. Only three cycles date back to the “Liederyear” of 1840 (incidentally the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck), while the others are from the composer’s last years, beyond 1850, and are full of nostalgia… This is far from the dishevelled romanticism of his early years, the mood is dark and the discourse broken up into small brushstrokes. The contrast from one era to the other is striking. Gerhaher and Huber perform these surprising marvels brilliantly. © SM/Qobuz