Hyperion Records

This is one of four works (only two are extant) which Gottschalk based on the music of the Belgian harpist Dieudonné Joseph Guillaume Félix Godefroid (1818–1897). Danse des sylphes appeared on CD 6. La Mélancolie, a transcription of Godefroid’s Op 24 for solo harp, cleverly conjures the soundworld of that instrument. Gottschalk was not yet twenty when he composed it but, although already a celebrity in France and Switzerland, was still referred to on the printed score as ‘L M Gottschalk de la Louisiane’.

from notes by Jeremy Nicholas © 2005