Karine Deshayes / Marie-Laure Garnier / Kaëlig Boché / Raphaël Jouan / Alphonse Cemin ALEXANDRE DUMAS ET LA MUSIQUE

 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS ET LA MUSIQUE

 

Malin Byström / Helsingborg Symphony / Stefan Solyom ORCHESTRAL SONGS

ORCHESTRAL SONGS

Mary Bevan / Joseph Middleton VOYAGES

VOYAGES

Gillian Zammit / Frank Camilleri / Britt Arend CANTILENA

CANTILENA

Elsa Dreisig / Jonathan Ware MORGEN

                                                                         MORGEN

Carolyn Sampson / Joseph Middleton REASON IN MADNESS

Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new disc, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’
Brahms’ Ophelia Songs, composed for a stage production of Hamlet, appear next to those by Richard Strauss and Chausson, while Ophelia's death is described by both Schumann (in Herzeleid) and Saint-Saëns. Goethe’s mysterious and traumatized Mignon appears in settings by Hugo Wolf as well as Duparc, while his ill-used Gretchen grieves by her spinning-wheel in Schubert's matchless setting. Sadness and madness tip into witchery and unbridled eroticism with Pierre Louÿs's poems about Bilitis, set by Kœchlin and Debussy. Sampson and Middleton end their recital as it began, with a suicide by drowning: in Poulenc’s monologue La Dame de Monte-Carlo, the elderly female protagonist has been unlucky at the gambling tables and decides to throw herself into the sea.

Christiane Karg / David Afkham / Bamberger Symphoniker PARFUM

Christiane Karg is one of the most-sought-after lyric sopranos of the present day, acclaimed for her embodiment of operatic roles and as a lieder, concert and oratorio singer. She can be seen and heard all around the world: at lieder recitals in New York’s Carnegie Hall and in the Vienna Konzerthaus, at La Scala in Milan with her 2016 debut in “Der Rosenkavalier”, at regular guest appearances at the Munich State Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera House, at the Salzburg Festival and at the Royal Opera House London. At the end of 017 she will give her debut at the famous MET Opera in New York (The Marriage of Figaro) and the Vienna State Opera.

David Afkham is Principal Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra and Chorus. He is in high demand as a guest conductor with some of the world’s finest orchestras and opera houses The Bamberg Symphony – Bavarian State Philharmonic has always enjoyed a special status in the music world.

This album is pure poetry – taking its spark from Christiane Karg’s engagement with the poetical works of Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Klingsor and Victor Hugo. A poetry in diction that has a wonderful affinity with Impressionist music at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. Christiane Karg finally decided upon works by Duparc, Koechlin, Debussy and Ravel for her new album. Her selection also includes an early composition by Benjamin Britten, which in its turn was inspired by Debussy and Ravel. Christiane Karg’s voice wafts this poetic scent, these colours in sound, aloft.

Poetry and music, words and voice blend into “Parfum”! (Presto Classical)