Layla Claire / Marie-Ève Scarfone SONGBIRD

"It is important for me to come back to art song as often as I can to hone my musicality and work in more detail as well as connect more intimately with my audience," explains soprano Layla Claire, whose 2016-17 calendar has been dominated by opera: Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Montreal, Zurich) and Countess Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Philadelphia).

Her debut recital album, Songbird (due out June 2 on ATMA Classique), has given her not only the art song fix she craves, but also an opportunity to collaborate with pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone, whom Claire describes as "a terrific musician and a joy to work with. Her personality is pure sunshine, which was a perfect match for the repertoire we chose."

The recording sessions took place in Salle Françoys-Bernier at Domaine Forget in the Charlevoix region of Quebec. "We recorded it there because of [the] terrific facilities and acoustics. The region was beautiful and inspiring — we had an incredible view of the St. Lawrence River. We walked along the beach and through the spectacular colours of the autumn forest between recording sessions."

Claire describes Songbird as a “sound garden — songs that we loved and thought worked well together,” rather than a collection built around a specific theme. “They are songs that are nurturing, cosy and charming,” she continues. “I wanted a CD that I could imagine someone putting on and listening to at home with a cup of tea."

The first song they selected was Ernest Chausson's "Dans la forêt du charme et de l'enchantement" — "unsettling, unusual and beautiful," says Claire — and they built the rest of the program around it: songs in three languages and spanning three centuries, from Henry Purcell's "Music for a While" to Dominik Argento's "Spring," by way of Gounod, Brahms, Wolf, Fauré, Britten and others.

"I added Barber's 'St. Ita's Vision' last," she notes of the lullaby from Hermit Songs, "as I was coming toward the end of my pregnancy and could start imagining rocking and nursing my little one."

Stéphane Tétreault / Marie-Ève Scarfone HAYDN - SCHUBERT - BRAHMS

In this celebration of Vienna, Stéphane Tétreault and Marie-Ève Scarfone evoke two instruments that are no longer commonly played today. Their performance transports us from the grace of a Haydn divertimento to Schubert’s divine “Arpeggione”, to say nothing of the depth of Brahms’ Cello Sonata No.1.
The baryton, a member of the viola da gamba family, was in use as early as the 17th century but did not gain popularity until the second half of the 18th century. In addition to its seven bowed strings, the baryton has 16 to 20 wire strings that are plucked with the thumb of the left hand, making it particularly diffi cult to master. Joseph Haydn contributed greatly to the baryton’s popularity by writing over 170 works for the instrument, including 126 trios, no doubt at the behest of his patron, Prince Nicolas Esterhazy, who played the instrument himself.
The version heard here of one of Haydn’s many works for baryton, viola and cello was arranged by the Russian-born American cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, a virtuoso who performed chamber music with greats such as Arthur Rubinstein, William Primrose, and Jascha Heifetz. Like most baryton trios, the Divertimento in D begins with a slow movement whose transparency and textures Stéphane Tétreault compares to a watercolour painting, followed by a stately minuet and an exuberant finale. 

A bowed string instrument that is tuned like a guitar, the arpeggione enjoyed limited popularity (over a period of no more than 10 years), likely due to its lack of an end pin, making it diffi cult to handle, and to its six strings, making it tricky to bow the middle strings. Franz Schubert’s Sonata, completed in November 1824, a year after the arpeggione’s invention by Johann Georg Staufer, remains the instrument’s most well-known work. It was published posthumously in 1871, with transcriptions for violin or cello already in addition to the arpeggione part. “The piece is technically very diffi cult,” points out Stéphane Tétreault, “but once on stage, the performer must attempt to transcend these diffi culties. The listener is often transfi xed by the ambiance this masterpiece creates.”