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Track(s) taken from CDA67948

Die Trauergondel 'La lugubre gondola', S134

composer
1882/5

Steven Isserlis (cello), Thomas Adès (piano)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
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Recording details: December 2011
Concert Hall, Wyastone Estate, Monmouth, United Kingdom
Produced by John Fraser
Engineered by Ben Connellan
Release date: October 2012
Total duration: 8 minutes 9 seconds

Cover artwork: Le Palais da Mula (1908). Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Private Collection / Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images
 

Reviews

‘This blissfully unhackneyed and brilliantly executed recital … the performance's sheer panache is as persuasive as the tonal refinement preceding it, and the recording throughout gives the players all the space and atmosphere they need to characterise the varied moods and textures of an unusually rewarding programme’ (Gramophone)

‘Something very special. Their choice of repertory here—devised as an extended upbeat to Adès's Lieux retrouvés at the end of the programme—is unusual, memorable, and wonderfully performed from start to finish’ (BBC Music Magazine)

Lieux retrouvés is some of the most enjoyable and readily accessible contemporary music you're likely to encounter … this music, like everything else on this recording, is brilliantly played by Isserlis and Adès. Unreservedly recommended’ (International Record Review)

‘Isserlis's brilliant recital disc with Adès makes an admirably integrated whole. The Proustianly titled Lieux retrouvés, which Adès wrote for the cellist and himself, is, in effect, a four-movement sonata whose figuration and part-writing knock at the door of the complex to seek the visionary. Isserlis is furiously lyrical and concentrated here, but no less so in the other works, which offer aptly Romantic-modern context for Adès's inspiration. Fauré's beautiful Second Sonata is dispatched not merely with superb elan, but with almost desperate intensity from both players’ (The Sunday Times)

‘Isserlis plays with almost tangible intensity and soul, while Adès finds charm and natural expression at every turn—a true musical dialogue’ (Financial Times)

‘There is an engaging emotional path running through, from the nostalgic resignation of late Liszt—three stark but lyrical transcriptions—to Adès' stirring title piece … the two men secure what Adès describes as the inner illumination and rapture of Fauré's 1921 Second Sonata, investing its Finale with the sinew and thrust of a younger Ravel’ (The New Zealand Herald)
La lugubre gondola was the product of deep personal emotion. Liszt wrote two versions, the first inspired (he later claimed) by a premonition of Wagner’s death in Venice in 1883, the second (on which the cello version is based) by the death itself. What tragic music! One can hear the dark water lapping mournfully on the shore, the cries of the black-clad gondoliers, the grief-stricken prayers of the mourners.

from notes by Steven Isserlis © 2012

La lugubre gondola fut le fruit d’une profonde émotion personnelle. Il en écrivit deux versions, inspirées l’une par une prémonition de la mort de Wagner en 1883 (c’est du moins ce qu’il affirmera), l’autre (sur laquelle repose la version pour violoncelle) par la mort même. Quelle musique tragique! On entend les eaux sombres clapoter, lugubrement, contre le rivage, les cris des gondoliers tout de noir vêtus, les prières douloureuses des éplorés.

extrait des notes rédigées par Steven Isserlis © 2012
Français: Hypérion

Die Trauergondel war das Ergebnis tiefer persönlicher Emotion. Liszt komponierte zwei Versionen, wobei die erste (wie er später behauptete) von einer Vorahnung von Wagners Tod in Venedig im Jahre 1883 inspiriert war, und die zweite (die der Cello-Version zugrunde liegt) von dem Tod selbst. Welch’ tragische Musik! Man kann hören, wie das dunkle Wasser melancholisch-sanft an das Ufer schlägt, und dazu die Rufe der schwarzgekleideten Gondolieri und die kummervollen Gebete der Trauernden.

aus dem Begleittext von Steven Isserlis © 2012
Deutsch: Viola Scheffel

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