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Monday, July 29, 2019

Hector Berlioz; Maurice Ravel - Les Nuits d'été; Shéhérazade (Véronique Gens)


Information

Composer: Hector Berlioz; Maurice Ravel
  • (01) Berlioz - Herminie
  • (05) Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été
  • (11) Ravel - Shéhérazade

Véronique Gens, soprano
Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire
John Axelrod, conductor

Date: 2012
Label: Ondine
https://www.ondine.net/index.php?lid=en&cid=2.2&oid=4826

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Review

French national Gens sings classic Berlioz-Ravel coupling

After three successful volumes of ‘Tragédiennes’, Véronique Gens follows in the great line of French-speaking sopranos by committing to disc the time-honoured coupling of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and Ravel’s Shéhérazade. Not so bright of timbre as Suzanne Danco, not so voluptuously rich in colours as Régine Crespin, she is a singer of the middle ground – warm, sensitive, the lyrical French soprano par excellence.

A link back to her three discs of French tragic arias is made at the start by including Berlioz’s early dramatic scena Herminie, a Classical heroine whom Gens brings to life as sympathetically as any of her operatic portrayals. Other performances may venture more dangerously close to the music’s nerve-endings but it is a joy to hear a native French speaker in the work. The same virtue also distinguishes the Berlioz and Ravel song-cycles. It is unusual to encounter a recording of Les nuits d’été in which the colouring is so consistent throughout – most rival solo interpreters try to vary the songs as much as they can, let alone the multi-voice recordings, like the early Colin Davis, Gardiner and Boulez – but Gens has in her sights a purer kind of poetry. How beautifully the ‘Spectre de la rose’ dances its ghostly waltz here, the flowing speed perfectly judged by John Axelrod to give the rhythms a lift and allow Gens to phrase the poem in unbroken sentences with total naturalness. A convincing argument is made for pacing the whole cycle swiftly. In Shéhérazade she is an engaging story-teller, though in this case the somewhat dull colours that Axelrod draws from Ravel’s exotic orchestration are more of a drawback. I shall not be setting aside Crespin’s classic recording (one of my personal desert island discs); but, on her own terms, Gens is completely satisfying.

-- Richard Fairman, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / RECORDING: ****
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jun/20/veronique-gens-berlioz-ravel-review
https://www.allmusic.com/album/berlioz-herminie-les-nuits-d%C3%A9t%C3%A9-ravel-sh%C3%A9h%C3%A9razade-mw0002361926
https://www.amazon.com/Berlioz-Herminie-Nuits-Ravel-Sh%C3%A9h%C3%A9razade/dp/B007S02NQY

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Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and conducted concerts with more than one thousand musicians. Although neglected in France for much of the 19th century, Berlioz's music was extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic and literary ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz

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Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles. His best known works include Boléro (1928), Gaspard de la nuit (1908), Daphnis et Chloé (1912). Ravel was also an exceptionally skilled orchestrator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ravel

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Véronique Gens (born 19 April 1966) is a French operatic soprano. Gens was born in Orléans, France, and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning first prize at the school. Her debut in 1986 was with William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants. She has since worked with Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs, Christophe Rousset, Philippe Herreweghe, and Jean-Claude Malgoire. While she started out as a Baroque specialist, Gens has also come into demand for roles in Mozart operas, and as an interpreter of songs by Berlioz, Debussy, Fauré and others. Her recordings include many works by Mozart and Purcell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9ronique_Gens
https://www.veroniquegens.com/

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