Camille Saint-Saëns - Mélodies avec orchestre (Yann Beuron; Tassis Christoyannis)

Information

Composer: Camille Saint-Saëns

1. Angélus
2. L'attente
3. Rêverie
4. La brise (Mélodies persanes, Op. 26)
5. Extase
6. La feuille de peuplier
7. L'enlèvement
8. Les fées
9. Souvenances
10. Désir d'amour
11. Les cloches de la mer
12. La splendeur vide (Mélodies persanes, Op. 26)
13. Le pas d'armes du Roi Jean
14. La cloche
15. Papillons
16. Plainte
17. Aimons-nous
18. Au cimetière (Mélodies persanes, Op. 26)
19. Danse macabre, Op. 40

Yann Beuron, tenor
Tassis Christoyannis, baritone
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Markus Poschner, conductor

Date: 2017
Label:  Alpha
https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/melodies-avec-orchestre-alpha-273

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Review

Though issued by Alpha, this disc effectively complements Aparté’s recent survey of Saint-Saëns’s song collections with piano (3/17). Mélodies persanes, albeit abridged in its orchestral version, is common to both, as is the baritone Tassis Christoyannis, sharing the material, in this instance, with the tenor Yann Beuron. David Patrick Stearns’s comments in reviewing the Aparté disc, both on Saint-Saëns’s achievement as a song composer and on Christoyannis’s importance as an artist, hold true here, though the new CD also serves as a reminder of just how fine Beuron can be in this repertory.

Saint-Saëns orchestrated 23 of his songs, remaining fastidiously true, it would seem, to his dictum that the poem should be displayed in a musical context in the way a jeweller uses a setting to show off a precious stone. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of the words. Strings often support the vocal line alone, while woodwind, brass and harp supply splashes of colour that speak volumes. ‘Extase’, in which the voice hovers in suggestive rapture over slowly shifting chords and arpeggios, is a notably beautiful example.

Saint-Saëns also clearly associated voice types and ranges with particular moods and emotions: the tenor is an elegant, if at times witty dreamer; the baritone is more worldly, active, sexual and anguished. Beuron, who has a remarkable ability to sustain soft high notes without sliding into falsetto, is impeccably stylish throughout, whether turning towards mystic contemplation in ‘Angélus’ or fantasising excitedly about his lover in ‘L’enlèvement’. Christoyannis sings ‘Extase’ and Mélodies persanes with a velvety sensuality, and brings the blackest of humour to ‘Danse macabre’ (the song pre-dates the symphonic poem) and a fearsome intensity to ‘Les cloches de la mer’, the darkest, most disquieting of the songs included here, and one for which Saint-Saëns, strikingly, provided his own text. Conducting and playing are faultless. It’s a very fine disc indeed.

-- Tim Ashley, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Jun/Saint-Saens_melodies_273.htm
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2018/04/saint-saens_son.php

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Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist. Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert debut at the age of ten. He was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas. His best-known works include his concertos, his 3rd symphony, Danse macabre and The Carnival of the Animals. Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, although his own compositions were generally within a conventional classical tradition. Saint-Saëns' students included Gabriel Fauré.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns

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Yann Beuron (born 1969) is a French operatic tenor. Beuron studied at the Conservatoire de Paris where he won first prize in singing and graduated in 1996. He made his debut in 1995 at the Opéra national du Rhin in the role of Belmonte in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail; his Paris Opera debut is in 1996. Beuron is particularly associated with the music of Mozart and French music and has appeared as Pelléas in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande in numerous European opera houses. Beuron has also appeared in a number of highly acclaimed productions of Offenbach operettas directed by Laurent Pelly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Beuron

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Tassis Christoyannis (born Athens, 1967) is a Greek operatic baritone. He studied conducting and composing at the Athens Conservatory and singing with Aldo Protti, winning the Aldo Protti Gold Medal in 1994. He was a member of Greek National Opera from 1995 to 1999, and has been principal baritone of Deutsche Opera am Rhein since 2000. He has performed in concert around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, New York. In addition to operatic roles he is known for his recordings of French melodies with American pianist Jeff Cohen, primarily for the Palazzetto Bru Zane and Aparté.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassis_Christoyannis
http://www.roh.org.uk/people/tassis-christoyannis

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