Natalie Dessay's first album of French arias was notable for its out-of-the-way modern selections, like excerpts from Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias, Ravel's L'enfent et les sortileges, and Milhaud's Medée. Her follow-up effort, Airs d'opéras français (the same title as the first album, but in French this time), changes directions by moving ...
This collection of works by Cesar Franck succeeds in presenting listeners with a good selection of the composer's more popular works, including the D minor Symphony and Franck's two most popular chamber works: the F minor Piano Quintet and the Violin Sonata. While all of the performances on the album are certainly competent and acceptable, none of ...
At first blush, this EMI Encore reissue of César Franck's Symphony in D minor and the Symphonic Variations may seem like a routine product, of interest only to cost-conscious collectors or neophytes; but experienced listeners will find this budget album to be much better than its uninspiring appearance and low price might suggest. The Orchestre ...
Taken together, Arthur Honegger's five symphonies and Pacific 231 form a compelling portrait of the man and his rugged style, clearly at odds with the studied elegance of his witty companions in Les Six. In the first three symphonies, Honegger's seriousness is communicated through rhythmically propelled melodies, biting dissonances, and vigorous ...
Albert Roussel's opera-ballet Padmâvatî has not been treated well by posterity, and on the basis of its music, it's difficult to understand why. The "Mediocre Libretto" excuse could be trotted out, but if it were applied objectively, quite a few anchors of the repertoire would be disqualified. The libretto, by Louis Laloy, is loosely based on a ...
Those who love the music of Georges Bizet have only two regrets: first, that the composer died too young to have reached full maturity and second, that he left so little truly great music behind. Three years before his death at 37, Bizet was commissioned to write the incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne. Wildly unpopular, the ...
Though not composed on the same grand scale as contemporary orchestral works by Franck, Chausson, or Dukas, Fauré's orchestral works are consistently subtle, tuneful, colorful, and well crafted. Michel Plasson with the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, pianist Jean-Philippe Collard, cellist Paul Tortelier, violinist Yan Pascal Tortelier, tenor ...
Hector Berlioz was a master of program music, and for two of his most famous orchestral works -- Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy -- the program is an intrinsic part of the full appreciation of the music. As is so often the case in compilations such as this one, the liner notes fall extremely short. While it is not the responsibility of ...
Even though the symphonic poem was invented by a Hungarian, Franz Liszt, and its greatest exponent was a German, Richard Strauss, some of the most celebrated works in this colorful genre were French, though their composers did not write quite as many as either Liszt or Strauss, nor establish their reputations primarily on them. This 2006 reissue ...
This premiere recording of conductor Tugan Sokhiev leading the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse shows listeners that this young man (he was only 28 years old at the time of the recording) is indeed an artist to be watched. While this album itself provides nothing remarkably new in the realm of interpretation, Sokhiev's control of the ...
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