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Monday, October 28, 2019

Henri Duparc - Songs (Sarah Walker; Thomas Allen)


Information

Composer: Henri Duparc
  1. L'invitation au voyage
  2. Sérénade florentine
  3. Testament
  4. Phidylé
  5. Extase
  6. La vague et la cloche
  7. Chanson triste
  8. Le galop
  9. Romance de Mignon
  10. Sérénade
  11. La fuite
  12. Lamento
  13. Élégie
  14. Le manoir de Rosemonde
  15. Au pays où se fait la guerre
  16. Soupir
  17. La vie antérieure

Sarah Walker, mezzo-soprano
Thomas Allen, baritone
Roger Vignoles, piano

Date: 1989
Label: Hyperion
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66323

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Review

This CD presents the brief but remarkable output of songs by Duparc during his artistic period that was cut short by a nervous affliction. These works are beautifully performed by mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker and baritone Thomas Allen, with sensitive piano accompaniment by Roger Vignoles. The collection opens with Duparc's best known melody, L'invitation au voyage, which is a setting of a text from Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal. The lovely rolling impressionist piano harmonies are played with exquisite fluidity, as they underscore Walker's velvety and intimate vocals. The Sérénade florentine is an impressionist lullaby to a loved one, delivered with touching emotion by Thomas Allen. Extase, Elégie and Testament show the influence of Wagner, and the Chanson triste is one of Duparc's early, Gounod-style songs. Au pays oú se fait la guerre (1869) is also an early work, but is particularly entrancing with simple modal harmonies and easily perceived song construction. By sensitive use of passing tones in the piano, the harmonies are subtly redefined and the music is extended dramatically toward the end by expressive on-rushes. Other early works included here are the Sérénade, Romance de Mignon, Le Galop, and the duet La Fuite, with their relatively unsophisticated stormy chromaticisms and pastoral settings. The more mature work is represented here by the expansively lyrical Phidylé, built in unhurried gradual steps by Allen, and by the last song that Duparc wrote, La vie antérieure, another setting of a Baudelaire text mixing modal (mixolydian) and impressionist harmonies and passionately nostalgic emotion. This type of modality is also employed in Soupir.

-- AllMusic

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Henri Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period. Born in Paris, Duparc was one of César Franck's first composition pupils, studying piano. In 1871, he joined Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine to found the Société Nationale de Musique. Duparc is best known for his 17 mélodies ("art songs"), with texts by poets such as Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle and Goethe. A mental illness, diagnosed at the time as "neurasthenia", caused him abruptly to cease composing at age 37, and eventually led to total blindness. He destroyed most of his music, leaving fewer than 40 works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Duparc_(composer)

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Sarah Walker (born 11 March 1943 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) is a British mezzo-soprano. She studied at the Royal College of Music from 1961 to 1965, initially as a violinist and cellist, and went on to study singing with Vera Rózsa. Since her operatic debut in 1969, she has appeared in numerous opera performances and is also known as a concert soloist and recitalist. Walker has toured Europe, the Americas, Australia and elsewhere. She is Prince Consort Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music and runs the "Creative Voices" course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Walker_(mezzo-soprano)

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Thomas Allen (born 10 September 1944) is an English operatic baritone. He is widely admired in the opera world for his voice, the versatility of his repertoire, and his acting—leading many to regard him as one of the best lyric baritones of the late 20th century. Allen studied with Hervey Alan at the Royal College of Music, and then with James Lockhart. He was a Covent Garden artist from 1972 to 1979, and it was during this time that he was hailed by one music critic as the finest English baritone since Sir Charles Santley. Allen also appears in recital in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, in Australia and America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Allen_(baritone)

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