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Track(s) taken from CDA66856

Aimons-nous

composer
1892
author of text
Les exilés

François Le Roux (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: January 1996
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Arthur Johnson
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: January 1997
Total duration: 4 minutes 30 seconds

Cover artwork: À l'ombres des bosquets chante un jeune poète. Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891)
Reproduced by permission of The Wallace Collection, London / Bridgeman Images
 

Other recordings available for download

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Reviews

‘This is the most resounding blow yet to be struck for the mélodies of Saint-Saëns … Le Roux is one of the most charismatic performers of our time … this is certainly one of the best things he has done so far. A double welcome for performers and rare repertory’ (Gramophone)

‘Musical jewels surface with delightful consistency in this 27-song recital. An absorbing and revelatory disc’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘There's hardly a dud among these 30-or-so songs on this well filled, perfectly recorded disc, an ideal accompaniment to a hot summer evening’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘Another immensely pleasant recital from Hyperion, both in content and performance. [François Le Roux] is establishing himself as the leading French baritone of the day’ (Classic CD)

«François Le Roux est l'interprète prédestiné. Son intelligence des mots, son sens de la juste inflexion font ici merveille» (Diapason, France)

'Apoya magnificamente al baritono, firmando entre ambos un trabajo auténticamente digno de conocerse. Sonido exemplar' (CD Compact, Spain)
Saint-Saëns was nothing if not aware of the popular market. From time to time (not often, for he is not nearly so obliging as Massenet) he writes a piece which is meant to capture the mood of the times, and to provide the public with what it wants. There is something of this accommodation in Aimons-nous et dormons, and Saint-Saëns’ reversion to the noble style of Gounod’s Lamartine settings (a vocal line unfolding over seraphically-repeated crotchets) seems a strange reversion to a Second Empire musical manner as late as 1892. There is even a suggestion of Lisztian elaboration in the way that the same musical phrases are repeated with ever more ornate accompaniment. The fact that it is among the composer’s most popular songs is merely confirmation of the fact that the plush chromatic style (the vocal line is made up of soulfully descending semitones) was a hit with the public. Despite his insistence that he was a classicist, Saint-Saëns was a man of his time, subject to a nineteenth-century enthusiasm for slightly ‘actory’ sublimity.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1997

Other albums featuring this work

L'heure exquise
Studio Master: CDA67962Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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