Mi lagnerò tacendo (Rossini) - from CDA67647 - Hyperion Records

Reviews

‘Rossini's writing for the piano is highly idiosyncratic. It requires a first-rate technique, a sure sense of style and an ability to bring off insouciance all manner of hair's-breadth effects. Mr Vignoles has the measure of all this and more’ (Gramophone)

‘Salon music at its most sophisticated and highly wrought. Gently elegiac bel canto arias jostle with popular dance rhythms, from a yodelling Tyrolean waltz to the snap and swagger of the bolero and fandango … the three singers give virtually unalloyed pleasure’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘All four musicians make a positive contribution to this charming, entertaining disc—a surprise venture into a still under-explored area of art-song by the ever-enterprising Hyperion’ (International Record Review)

‘It's hard for any disc of Rossini's Paris salon songs not to speed by in a wink of delight. And it's impossible with Miah Persson's bright soprano and the sensitive accompaniments of Roger Vignoles’ (The Times)

‘Rossini's salon works are witty, charming, tuneful and downright silly, complete with florid vocal lines. Lovely performances’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘Joyous music-making that is perfect for a summer's evening’ (Daily Mail)

‘There isn't a low point on the entire disc. Roger Vignoles plays with all his characteristic intelligence and subtlety. Miah Persson is enchanting in the opening La promessa, and playfully dazzling in La pastorella dell'Alpi. Stella Doufexis' pure, rich voice gives perfect expression to L’orpheline du Tyrol, and the two women's voices meld together magically when paired in duets such as La pesca. Meanwhile, Bruce Ford is technically brilliant and dramatically engaging in the drinking song, L'orgia, and smoothly leads the mood from light to darkness with L'esule, the first of the Péchés de vieillesse. If Rossini's songs are the cake and the performers the icing, the recording itself is the unexpected cherry on top. The acoustic of Potton Hall in Suffolk immediately transports you to the intimate space of Rossini's salon, candles flickering, guests listening intently, adding a further dimension to this already wonderful disc’ (bbc.co.uk)

Mi lagnerò tacendo forms part of volume 13, under the heading ‘Musique anodine’. Rossini composed almost fifty different versions of Metastasio’s text, some of which are full-scale songs, some no more than ‘album leaves’. Rossini must have relished the irony of setting a text in which the poet ‘laments in silence’ his ‘bitter fate’—he had, after all, consciously abandoned the theatre and condemned himself to a self-imposed silence. He dedicated the six different settings of ‘Musique anodine’ to his wife: ‘I offer these modest songs to my dear wife Olympe as a simple testimony of gratitude for the affectionate, intelligent care which she lavished on me during my overlong and terrible illness.’

Mi lagnerò tacendo ressortit à une partie du volume 13 intitulée «Musique anodine». Rossini tira presque cinquante versions de ce texte de Métastase, de la mélodie d’envergure à la simple «feuille d’album». Et il savoura certainement l’ironie de mettre en musique un texte où le poète «déplore en silence» son «sort amer»—après tout, lui-même avait sciemment abandonné le théâtre et s’était condamné au silence. Il dédia ses six pièces de «Musique anodine» à sa femme: «J’offre ces mélodies à ma chère épouse Olympe, comme simple témoignage de ma gratitude pour les soins affectueux, intelligents qu’elle me prodigua dans ma longue et douloureuse maladie.»

Mi lagnerò tacendo gehört zu einem Teil von Band 13, unter der Überschrift „Musique anodine“. Rossini komponierte nahezu 50 verschiedene Versionen von Metastasios Text—einige ausschweifende Lieder, andere nicht mehr als „Albumblätter“. Rossini dürfte die Ironie einer Vertonung geschätzt haben, in dem der Dichter „in Stille“ sein „bitteres Schicksal beweint“—er hatte ja bewusst das Theater aufgegeben und sich zu einer selbstauferlegten Stille verurteilt. Er widmete die sechs verschiedenen Vertonungen von „Musique anodine“ seiner Frau: „Ich gebe meiner lieben Gattin Olympe diese bescheidenen Lieder als schlichtes Zeugnis der Dankbarkeit für die liebevolle, intelligente Betreuung, mit der sie mich während meiner überlangen, schrecklichen Krankheit überschüttete.“

Recording details: April 2007
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Ben Connellan
Release date: June 2008
Total duration: 2 minutes 46 seconds

Cover artwork: The Gondala, Venice, with Santa Maria della Salute in the Distance (1865). James Holland (1799-1870)
Copyright Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire, England / Bridgeman Images

Mi lagnerò tacendo

Stella Doufexis (soprano), Roger Vignoles (piano)

Reviews

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