Various Composers - Voice of Hope (Camille Thomas)

Information

1. Maurice Ravel - Deux mélodies hébraïques: 1. Kaddisch (transcr. Richard Tognetti)
2. Christoph Willibald Gluck - Dance of the Blessed Spirits (from Orfeo ed Euridice) (arr. Mathieu Herzog)
3. Henry Purcell - When I am laid in earth (from Dido and Aeneas) (arr. Mathieu Herzog)
4. Fazil Say - Cello Concerto 'Never Give Up', Op. 73: 1. Never Give Up
5. Fazil Say - Cello Concerto 'Never Give Up', Op. 73: 2. Terror - Elegy
6. Fazil Say - Cello Concerto 'Never Give Up', Op. 73: 3. Song of Hope
7. Max Bruch - Kol Nidrei, Op. 47: 1. Adagio ma non troppo
8. Max Bruch - Kol Nidrei, Op. 47: 2. Un poco più animato
9. Richard Wagner - Träume (No. 5 from Wesendonck-Lieder) (arr. Mathieu Herzog)
10. Antonín Dvořák - Songs My Mother Taught Me, Op. 55 No. 4
11. John Williams - Theme from 'Schindler's List'
12. Jules Massenet - 'Pourquoi me réveiller' (from Werther)
13. Gaetano Donizetti - 'Una furtiva lagrima' (from L'elisir d'amore)
14. Vincenzo Bellini - 'Casta Diva' (from Norma) (arr. Mathieu Herzog)
15. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - 'Dalla sua pace' (from Don Giovanni)
16. Giuseppe Verdi - Va, pensiero (from Nabucco) (arr. Mathieu Herzog)

Camille Thomas, cello

Brussels Philharmonic

Mathieu Herzog, conductor

Stéphane Denève, conductor (4-6)

Date: 2020

Label: Deutsche Grammophon

https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/voice-of-hope-camille-thomas-11914

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Review

Fazıl Say describes his 2017 Cello Concerto as an artistic response to the terror attacks in Paris and Istanbul, and ‘an outcry for freedom and peace’. It was composed for Camille Thomas, who plays it with ferocious commitment on this premiere recording.

Say’s style is eclectic. The opening cello solo seems to pick up threads from the string-writing of Kodály and Bartók, and indeed much of the work is in a comfortable, quasi-tonal language that harks back nearly a century. I find his music most involving when he brings Turkish elements to the mix. Listen starting at 3'27" in the first movement, for example, where jaggedly syncopated rhythms dance beneath a supplicating folkloric melody. I find Say’s evocation of machine-gun fire at the centre of the second movement is too literal, dampening its emotional effect – a pity, as the lyrical outer sections have a delicately mournful beauty.

Thomas follows Say’s Concerto with Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, to which she brings an intense Elgarian nobility. All the other works are arrangements and transcriptions, mostly from vocal works. The disc opens with a version of the ‘Kaddisch’ from Ravel’s Deux Mélodies hébraïques that sounds at once ancient and modern, like something Jordi Savall might have dug up. Thomas’s long-breathed phrasing and generous use of portamento transform Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits into a romantic aria, and she brings touching intimacy to Dido’s Lament. But a certain sameness of mood and more than a hint of sentimentality set in at the programme’s midpoint (after the Bruch), and the last eight selections feel tailor-made to be ‘relaxing’ FM radio fare. I must add, too, that not all the arrangements are entirely successful. In ‘Una furtiva lagrima’, for instance, the cello doesn’t quite cut through the orchestra, the instrument lacking the ping of a tenor’s voice, and ‘Dalla sua pace’ not only seems to have been recorded in an entirely different acoustic but has the sound quality of a mono archival recording.

I have no caveats whatsoever concerning Thomas’s playing, which is unfailingly exquisite in its tonal sheen and imaginative detail, and sensitively accompanied throughout by the Brussels Philharmonic. Despite its generous timing, however, this programme seems more like a tray of similarly creamy hors d’oeuvres than a satisfying meal.

-- Andrew Farach-Colton, Gramophone

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Camille Thomas (born May 1988 in Paris, France) is a Franco-Belgian cellist. She studied with Marcel Bardon and Philippe Muller in Paris, Stephan Forck and Frans Helmerson in Berlin, and Wolfgang-Emmanuel Schmidt in Weimar. She has performed throughout Europe, alongside renowned orchestras, conductors and musicians. In 2017, Thomas became the first woman cellist to sign an exclusive international contract with Deutsche Grammophon. She has played a 1788 Ferdinand Gagliano cello, dubbed the Château Pape Clément, and since 2019, the De Munck-Feuermann, a 1730 Stradivarius cello.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Thomas

https://www.camillethomas.com/

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