Patricia Petibon / Susan Manoff L'AMOUR, LA MORT, LA MER

                                                    L'AMOUR, LA MORT, LA MER

Sandrine Piau / Susan Manoff CHIMÈRE

After a number of appearances in Alpha productions Sandrine Piau now joins the label for several recordings. With Chimère, she invites us on a voyage into the intimate and infinite territory of dreams. ‘Chimera: an illusory, unsatisfied quest, the graveyard of our illusions...’ She and her long standing partner, the pianist Susan Manoff, have thought up a programme combining the German lied (Hugo Wolf, one of Schumann’s Mignon songs, a scene from Goethe’s Faust by Carl Loewe), Mélodies by Debussy and Poulenc (his Banalités), and Art Songs by Barber along with discoveries of more rarely heard composers like Ivor Gurney and the Dickinson Songs of André Previn – the celebrated American conductor is less well-known for his compositions, which include this magnificent cycle written for Renée Fleming. Equally at home in French, German and English, Sandrine Piau is at the peak of her artistry. Fantoches, Clair de Lune, Solitary Hotel, Will there really be a morning?: set out for the world of dreams following this unique poetic itinerary. ‘The land of chimeras is the only one in this world worth living in’ (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).

Sandrine Piau / Susan Manoff ÉVOCATION

This is a beautiful recital--a complete, well-thought-out, gorgeously sung program that combines compatible, complementary works with a singer who knowingly, sensitively interprets them. Although the songs span the period from the 1880s to the 1930s and are the creations of six composers who, albeit contemporaries, are not customarily joined together stylistically, there's an inexplicable camaraderie of spirit that illumines and threads through these songs whose subjects are love's longing and hope, pain, pleasure, and danger, conveyed through images of flowers, birds, trees, water, colors. Color may be the key word here, for each composer treats voice and piano with such careful concern for timbre, for the effects of upper-register brightness, textural density and transparency, and for the inherent tonal qualities, rhythms, and inflections of language, be it French or German.
Soprano Sandrine Piau has an ideal voice for this music--true and lovely across her range, with no points of harshness, no weakness of technique. And especially in the French repertoire, her ability to phrase and impart feeling is consistent with her statement in the notes that this is her "most personal and intimate" album. Although she does a nice job with the Strauss songs, they don't seem to flow as naturally as, for instance, those by Chausson (of which Le Colibri--"the hummingbird"--for me was the highlight of the disc). Piau is fortunate to have such a musical soul-mate in pianist Susan Manoff, a superb partner who also knows about nuances of color, from the softest shades to tones more bold and emphatic.
There's much to savor here--it would be difficult to name an inferior song among the program's 30 selections--but the rarely-heard Strauss Mädchenblumen, Schoenberg's beautiful and affecting Vier Lieder Op. 2 (from 1899), and Koechlin's Sept Chansons pour Gladys (to his own very strange texts) are of particular interest. And you've never heard a more gently endearing song than Zemlinsky's Frühlingslied or a more perfectly evocative musical creation than Debussy's Fleur des blés, depicting a breeze rippling through a cornfield, a whispering bird, cascading hair, sunshine, and flowers. The sound is nicely balanced and complementary to both voice and piano, with a comfortably positioned listener perspective (not always the case with voice/piano recitals!). Highly recommended. (David Vernier / ClassicsToday.com)

Sandrine Piau / Susan manoff APRÈS UN RÊVE

Sandrine Piau was recently forced to withdraw from both Glyndebourne and this year's Proms after sustaining a knee injury, so if you admire her work, then you're going to have to make do, I'm afraid, with her latest album. It thoughtfully examines images of night, sleep, dreams and waking in post-Romantic and modern song. Piau treats the subject metaphorically as well as literally, which allows her to include Poulenc's settings of surrealist poetry, Strauss's Morgen, and Britten's The Salley Gardens, which deals with waking up to reality after disappointment in love. She also gives us Vincent Bouchot's Galgenlieder – an eerie new song cycle that pitches settings of Christian Morgenstern somewhere between nightmare and nursery rhyme – together with some rarely heard Mendelssohn and familiar numbers by Chausson and Fauré. At 58 minutes, the disc is a bit short, and a preponderance of reflective material results in an occasional sameness of mood. But there's exquisite playing from Susan Manoff, and no mistaking the beauty of Piau's voice, or her hypnotic way with words. This is singing that sends shivers down your spine. (Tim Ashley / The Guardian)

Karen Vourc'h / Susan Manoff TILL SOLVEIG...

The predominantly Scandinavian repertory on this album might seem an odd choice for a French soprano, but Karen Vourc'h, a former physics student, is of partly Norwegian background A few of the Grieg songs, such as Solveig's Song (track 5), are familiar recital items, but much of Vourc'h's material is unusual. The Grieg songs, even where originally in other languages, are sung in Norwegian. A group of songs by Jean Sibelius is in Swedish, and Vourc'h makes a good case for these little-known, rough-hewn pieces. Lesser known still is Ture Rangström's Pan (track 9), a gorgeous interlude of deep summer in the middle of the program. Vourc'h returns to more familiar ground with a set of Debussy songs at the end. What's most impressive is how she modulates her voice among the various styles present in this little vocal recital, with a soft, luxuriant sound in the Grieg, a rougher edge in the Sibelius, and a classic repose in Debussy's concluding Beau soir. There isn't a dull moment in this performance of largely fresh material, and Vourc'h makes it seem both personal and perfectly controlled. Highly recommended. (James Manheim)

Véronique Gens / Susan Manoff HAHN - DUPARC - CHAUSSON Néère

The soprano Véronique Gens might be thought a natural for the French art song repertoire. But Néère, taking its title from the opening song by Reynaldo Hahn (the reference is to the Greek nymph known in English as Neaera, "white as a fine marble statue, with her rosy cheeks"), is one of just a few albums in the genre she has released. Get hold of it without delay: it's gorgeous. The French mélodie is not a high-register genre, and for a singer like Gens these songs reside in the lower part of her range, where she now brings just a bit of sultriness and smoke with devastating effect. The program includes three composers of the late 19th century who are closely related but contrasting in their individual styles: in the words of annotator Nicolas Southon "the melancholic Henri Duparc, the elegiac Ernest Chausson, the charmer Reynaldo Hahn." You could really dip in anywhere, but sample track 15, Hahn's A Chloris, for a taste of what Gens can do. The playing of accompanist Susan Manoff seems welded to Gens' vocal line, which even with all the voluptuous, erotic beauty has a kind of steely concentration that grows stronger and more impressive as the album proceeds. An absolute gem. (James Manheim)

Patricia Petibon / Susan Manoff LA BELLE EXCENTRIQUE

The compact disc as a physical object, whether the music is classical or pop, is of interest to very few people nowadays. One response from musicians has been an adjustment to the new climate of downloadable single tracks and bite-sized clips that don’t suffer from being part of a shuffle. Patricia Petibon’s new disc does exactly the opposite. Her program happens to contain nearly thirty tracks, but they all go together as a single performance, and they need to be heard in the order in which she presents them. The program is at its core a song recital, but Petibon and pianist Susan Manoff have invited some off-the-cuff participation from a second pianist, a second vocalist, an accordion player and a percussionist. The structure is something of an after-dinner talent show, with relentless high spirits to start, a passing moment halfway through when everybody gets a little soupy and sentimental as the Pernod kicks in, a strategic regrouping for a few big numbers, and one sad song too many at the end to send everybody to the pile of coats on the bed. At times, there’s a deliberately amateurish quality. The second vocalist is Olivier Py, who is not quite a singer (he is quite a director, having mounted a production of Berg’s Lulu for Petibon), and the percussion parts give the illusion of improvisations that non-musicians might toss in from the sidelines. 

There are a few of the French repertoire’s greatest hits, by Fauré and Poulenc, but most of the music is unfamiliar. There’s a good deal of Satie, including two of the zippy Sports et Divertissements (piano only, without the sardonic words). If Petibon is perfectly capable of singing two un-ironic love songs, she nonetheless might separate them with a Satie can-can. But Satie can also have a side that is quietly aghast, and his brief “Désespoir agréable” makes a perfect piano transition into the set of downcast numbers that begins with Fauré’s “Spleen.” There is a particularly clever transition where Satie’s “Grande Ritournelle” for piano four-hands at first seems to be a gussied-up version of Poulenc’s song “Les gars qui vont à la fête,” but it is the real thing, and the real Poulenc song follows. Among the discoveries are Reynaldo Hahn’s “Pholoé,” a rare song about aging, and the music of Léo Ferré, who turns out to be right up there with Michel Legrand. 

Petibon is having such a good time managing to be loose and crazy even though this is a studio production that she disarms criticism. She can be dirty without being sleazy in the duets with Py. She can drip crocodile tears at the end of “Les gars” but then sing Poulenc’s “Voyage à Paris” without mocking it and deliver two of those quietly devastating Poulenc songs, “Hier” and “Aux Officiers de la Garde Blanche,” with equilibrium. It’s perhaps worth noting that a tiny Manuel Rosenthal song about a zoo elephant who wets his pants has been turned into something impossibly grand by the full company here, and it is funny. But Régine Crespin used to stop the show with this number by underplaying it. Times change, and I love this album. Twice, by the time Rosenthal songs came up, I felt that one piece too many had all that extra percussion. And then twice, just as I do when the cantina tune keeps coming back in Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toit, I succumbed unreservedly with a giggle. Madoff, among many virtues, totally gets the deadpan, unreadable quality of Satie’s accompaniments, and the idiomatic English translations of Susannah Howe and James Harding add immeasurably to the considerable enjoyment of this release. (William R. Braun)