Sandrine Piau

[Maciek]

Another request for recommendations. I've heard good things about her but don't have any recordings.

[MishaK]

I have a lovely disc of her singing Debussy songs with Jos van Immerseel accompanying on a historic piano. Highly recommended. Also excellent is her disc of Mozart arias.

[Que]

This one is very nice.

Q

[MishaK]

Oh, yes indeed! I have that one as well. Almost forgt.

[Siedler]

Sandrine is one of my favourites, what a beautiful and expressive voice she has. She's on Le Paladins (Châtelet) and L'amour Des Trois Oranges (De Nederlandse Opera) DVDs but I haven't seen these.
Do try her splendid Händel and Mozart recordings, no wonder critics praise them.


Then I can also recommend this CD of Vivaldi arias:
Despite Paul Agnew, this disc is very much worth because the arias sang by Piau (Hallenberg is also great).

[Maciek]

Thanks for your thoughts and recommendations, everyone!  Apparently I'll just have to get everything. One day.

[val]

MrOsa

Another request for recommendations. I've heard good things about her but don't have any recordings.

Listen to Couperin's Leçons des Tenébres. She is sublime.

It is a recording directed by Rousset, with also Veronique Gens (DECCA).

[Siedler]

Has anyone heard the new recita cd of hers?

[Tsaraslondon]

I have the Handel disc, which I find very impressive. But has anyone heard her live? I've been told the voice is very small and that she has trouble being heard even over a small baroque ensemble.

[Lobby]

Tsaraslondon,

I saw her last year in a performance of Haydn's Creation (in English) by the Gabrielli Consort and Paul McCreesh at the Barbican.

Her voice is indeed very small indeed and I was distinctly underwhelmed.  Her English was also a bit idiosyncratic and she seemed an odd choice for a performance in English. 

The performance used five soloists rather than the more usual three. Piau sang Gabriel but was rather overshadowed by the other soprano singing Eve, the wonderful Miah Persson, who also had better English.  To my ears, Piau's voice was pleasant and her singing very tasteful, but the want of power and volume did rather tell against her, especially as McCreesh was using an expanded orchestra and chorus, mirroring Haydn's own performances.

I have since seen other complaints about her inaudibility in live concerts and suspect that she is one of the new breed of singers who are much better on record, where the engineers can make up for any deficiencies in volume, than live.

Incidentally, the same forces recorded the Creation in the studio at the same time and the recording is to be released this month on DG.  As I enjoyed the performance as a whole, I will be getting this and I suspect that Piau may well come over better on the recording than she did in the Barbican.

Jon

[Don]

I like her performances very much in Martin's Le Vin Herbe and Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream.  Her voice might be weak in the concert hall, but I doubt I'll ever get the chance to hear her in concert.

[Harry]

So far, I only heard recordings from her, and they were fine by me.
Concerts are not really my thing.
I want her for my own, t'was always this way with me....

[Don]

So far, I only heard recordings from her, and they were fine by me.
Concerts are not really my thing.

Nor mine.  I easily get distracted at concerts and end up not paying full attention to the performances.  Also, you have to sit on uncomfortable seats with little room between yourself and the next person.  Just a waste of money for my part.

[Tsaraslondon]

I must say that Don's and Harry's reaction to Piau not being able to reproduce her recorded performances in a live situation somewhat worrying. At one time classical musicians (and pop musicians for that matter) would only be given a recording contract because they had already proved their abilities in a live situation. Are we now to be besieged with artists who can't really perform live, but who, with the aid of a bit of knob twiddling by the engineers, sound fine in the studio?

Well actually it's happening already. Katherine Jenkins and Andrea Bocelli are perfect examples of "opera" singers who would never be able to sustain a role in a staged opera. An illustration of the inadequacy of Bocelli was provided in a recent TV documentary about Bryn Terfel. Whatever the situation, whether on stage, in rehearsal or in the studio, Terfel's voice sounded wonderfully rich. However in one part we were taken into the studio, where he was making a recording of the Pearl Fishers duet with Andrea Bocelli. Terfel sounded fine in both the rehearsal, recorded only by the documentary film mikes, and the finished (mixed) version which was to be released. Bocelli, on the other hand, without the various tricks the engineers used to make his voice sound at least reasonable on the recording, sounded just thin and tinny. Terfel, of course, is a real singer, whereas Bocelli is not. I feel the public is being hoodwinked. This is actually no better than the scandal that erupted when it emerged that the members of certain 80s pop groups hadn't actually played or sung on any of their records, and that they were actually just the front for various sessions singers.

I am mot suggesting that Piau's recordings are being made by a session singer, but, if she can't be heard in a small hall, over a small period ensemble, then recordings are not a true representation of her singing. I, for one, won't be buying any more of her records.

[Que]

Tsaraslondon,

I saw her last year in a performance of Haydn's Creation (in English) by the Gabrielli Consort and Paul McCreesh at the Barbican.

...but, if she can't be heard in a small hall, over a small period ensemble, then recordings are not a true representation of her singing.

Just a question because I'm not familiar with British venues: what is the size of the Barbican?

Q

[Tsaraslondon]

Just a question because I'm not familiar with British venues: what is the size of the Barbican?

Q

Well, ok, the Barbican is quite a large hall, but singers don't usually have a problem being heard there. Kathleen Battle, who hardly had a large voice, had no difficulty filling the hall, and Janet Baker was able to make the quietest pianissimi travel to the very back of the auditorium. So it is not so much a question of size of voice, but the ability to project. Countertenors are not renowned for volume either, but David Daniels sound just fine at the Barbican.
Over the years, I have heard many singers there, some with huge orchestras, some only with piano, but I have yet to hear any who have had difficulty projecting into the hall.

[Que]

So it is not so much a question of size of voice, but the ability to project.

Agreed, the latter is crucial.
All this discussion makes me curious about Piau in a live performance. 

Q

[Sergeant Rock]

Are we now to be besieged with artists who can't really perform live, but who, with the aid of a bit of knob twiddling by the engineers, sound fine in the studio?...I, for one, won't be buying any more of her records.

Isn't that a rather extreme reaction? especially since you've never actually heard her live? She isn't new either. She has a career going back decades, and a recording career at least 17 years old now. If she were indeed inaudible in concert, I very much doubt conductors of the caliber of McCreesh, Jacobs, Christie, Herreweghe would have continued to use her over the years. If she couldn't deliver, why would they? She's not the latest "kid" the record companies are trying to exploit for a quick buck. She has a track record and is a mature artist. I think her critics are probably indulging in hyperbole...not a rare thing among many opera fanatics who love to nit pick; who would rather dwell on the negatives than the positives.

Since I'm listening to her in my living room, how she sounds at the Barbican isn't important to me anyway. You imply her recordings are a fraud. All recordings are artificial. When has a concerto recording ever sounded like an actual concert? The soloist is almost always made audible and unrealistically huge, more or less, despite the fact a pianist or violinist is frequently drowned out by the orchestra during the real thing.

[/quote]

I saw her last year in a performance of Haydn's Creation (in English) by the Gabrielli Consort and Paul McCreesh at the Barbican.
Her voice is indeed very small...

Small is quite different than inaudible. Not every singer is Birgit Nilsson (thank god  )

Sarge

[Tsaraslondon]

Isn't that a rather extreme reaction? especially since you've never actually heard her live?

OK, I admit I am exaggerating somewhat. There is no doubt she is a musician and a fine artist. In that way we are not being hoodwinked, but we have to face the fact that in the days before records existed, she might well have found it difficult to sustain a career if she had difficulty making herself heard in public.

Since I'm listening to her in my living room, how she sounds at the Barbican isn't important to me anyway. You imply her recordings are a fraud. All recordings are artificial. When has a concerto recording ever sounded like an actual concert? The soloist is almost always made audible and unrealistically huge, more or less, despite the fact a pianist or violinist is frequently drowned out by the orchestra during the real thing.


Small is quite different than inaudible. Not every singer is Birgit Nilsson (thank god  )

Sarge

In a way, they are a fraud, because the engineers are able to make sure her voice is heard easily above the musicians she is singing with, even though this is not the case in the concert hall. Admittedly, all recordings do this with soloists to a certain degree (sometimes I wish they would do it more), because in a recording, we don't have the advantage of sight to draw our attention to the singer, but I would hope that in most cases, they try to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the live experience.


However I am not implying or suggesting that I want all singers to sound like Birgit Nilsson (heaven forbid)!. But it has to be  admitted that recording engineers have much more difficulty recording large voices than they do small ones. I never heard either Nilsson or Sutherland live, but I am told that recordings do not do justice to the sheer volume of sound they could produce, the inference being that, had I heard them in the flesh, I would have been more impressed with them than I am on records. With Piau, it seems the reverse is true, and that does seem to me to be unfortunate. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to first become aware of an artist through their recordings. For me, the second stage is to want to hear them live (this, incidentally, applies to both classical musicians and pop singers). In most cases, though not all, I have found the live experience to be better than the recorded one, and that, for me, is the more important.

[head-case]

Nor mine.  I easily get distracted at concerts and end up not paying full attention to the performances.  Also, you have to sit on uncomfortable seats with little room between yourself and the next person.  Just a waste of money for my part.

I really find this bizarre.  I certainly enjoy recordings, and it is certainly true that the making of classical music recordings is in some sense an art in itself.  However I have never heard a recording that could come close the the majesty of a symphony orchestra in a good hall.  How can you imagine that your loudspeakers, which in the end amount to a few pieces of rubberized cardboard glued to loops of wire, can reproduce the subtlety of hearing the direct sound from a hundred individual musical instruments, all playing together in a room with superb acoustics?  And although it is perhaps easier to concentrate in your dank basement, cloistered with your extremely expensive stereo system, there is a certain sense of event in hearing a live concert, where anything can happen.  I can't count how many Karajan recordings I've listened to over the years, but the sum total of them isn't the equal of hearing Karajan conduct Bruckner 8 at Carnegie Hall with the Vienna Philharmonic.