20th Century French Songs

[The new erato]

Great post!

I'm just discovering this:



Great quality, and occasionally great fun. I'm enjoying it enormously! A real lucky strike from the "Please buy me" sale it seems!

[knight66]

Oh....looks taster, whose sale?

Mike

[The new erato]

Oh....looks taster, whose sale?

Mike

Hyperions own sale.

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/o.asp?o=1016

Look under current offers. The list changes every few days, and I check almost daily. Got this double for £ 11, P&P included.

Poor Chabrier haven't even got his own composer thread....

[knight66]

Thanks for that; I am off to the sales.

Mike

[The new erato]

Here is a double disc by Barbara Hendricks.


It has some music falling outside the thread category; but contains all of an earlier recital of Ravel and Duparc. I do enjoy her voice in French music. As will be seen Elliot-Gardiner is her conductor; he is finely attuned to the flavour here. Scheherezade is a lovely performance.

She also has a double disc in the same series of an hour of Faure then Hahn, Duparc and some earlier French composers. These are accompanied by piano. Again, I think she absorbs the style very well. Not the absolute word paintiong some singers provide, but lots of rewards.

Mike

There's a double EMI discs of Debussy with her in the August release lists. I don't know, but strongly suspects though, that it will be without texts. My own aquisition will depend on that as the disc contains stuff where I haven't got the texts from other recordings.

[knight66]

They will almost certainly be here.

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/

Not as handy though as sitting in an armchair and reading whilst listening.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

So my question is – who for this song in more modern sound?  I  see that Lotte Lehman recorded it.

And who for Hahn generally in fact?

This disc by Susan Graham had a generally excellent press, and she is usually very good in French music. It includes D'une prison.


I have a special fondness for the singing of Maggie Teyte, who had a unique sympathy for French music (cf her marvellous Debussy with Cortot and, one of my favourites, an exquisite rendering of Duparc's Chanson triste)  - and she recorded not only the famous Si mes vers avaient des ailes, and L'heure exquise, but also  Offrande, En sourdine and Belle lune d'argent.

I also love Victoria De Los Angeles's version (in an orchestral arrangemnet) of Hahn's beautiful L'Enamouree.

There is also a Hyperion 2 disc set with Graham Johnson as pianist, in which the singers are Felicity Lott, Susan Bickley, Ian Bostridge and Stephen Varcoe. Unfortunately I usually have something of an antipathy for Bostridge.