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Track(s) taken from CDH55217

Barcarolle, Op 7 No 3

First line:
Gondolier du Rialto
composer
19 October 1873, Op 7 No 3, ‘À Madame Pauline Viardot’, Hamelle: Second Collection p82, G minor (original key) 6/8 Andante con moto
author of text

Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: September 1983
St Barnabas's Church, North Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Compton
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: September 1987
Total duration: 2 minutes 14 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

John Mark Ainsley (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)
Dame Janet Baker (mezzo-soprano), Geoffrey Parsons (piano)
Nigel Cliffe (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Reviews

‘This fizzing multilingual Venetian 'Souvenir' slips down as gratefully as Prosecco on a hot day’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘This is a good chance to hear one of the world's finest and most versatile tenors accompanied by one of the world's leading accompanists’ (American Record Guide)

‘Those in search of beautiful singing will find ample riches, graced above all by the beguiling tenor of Anthony Rolfe Johnson’ (Classic FM Magazine)
Some twenty years before his life-changing visit to Venice with Winnaretta Singer (later the Princesse de Polignac) Fauré evokes the haunting bitter-sweet mood of ‘Serenissima’, with its gondolier calls resounding across the lagoons. The vocal bel canto, inspired by Chopin’s great Barcarolle, Op 60, and ornamented with Italianate acciaccature, is launched high in the stave and topples down in conjunct harmonic steps, a procedure which is a distinguishing feature in Fauré’s songs of the early period. The accompaniment is merely an echo of this quasi-improvised vocal flowering; the piano here temporarily withdraws as the driving force behind the composer’s ideas, reculer pour mieux sauter. Once again this song is dedicated to Madame Viardot. Its inclusion in the Second Collection of songs, rather than the first where it truly belongs, results from a complicated piece of publishing history concerning Hamelle’s desire to equalize the number of songs in each of the collections to a round figure of twenty. The heading of the lyric in the 1872 edition of poems by Marc-Monnier (whose name is thus hyphenated by the publisher Lemerre) contains the words ‘Musique de F Gratz’ (Franz Gratz, 1803–1874, a Swiss composer resident in Paris, once well known).

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2005

Quelque vingt ans avant le séjour passé à Venise en compagnie de Winnaretta Singer (future princesse de Polignac)—un séjour qui allait changer sa vie—, Fauré évoque la lancinante atmosphère douce-amère de la «Sérénissime», avec les appels des gondoliers résonnant à travers ses lagunes. Le bel canto vocal, inspiré par la grande Barcarolle, op.60 de Chopin et orné d’acciaccature italianisantes, est déclenché haut dans la portée et bascule en degrés harmoniques conjoints—un procédé qui est l’une des marques distinctives des mélodies du Fauré première manière. L’accompagnement est un simple écho de ce flux vocal quasi improvisé: le piano se retire ici momentanément, comme la force agissante des idées du compositeur—reculer pour mieux sauter. Cette mélodie est, comme la précédente, dédiée à Madame Viardot. Son insertion dans le deuxième Recueil, plutôt que dans le premier auquel elle appartient réellement, résulte d’une complexe histoire d’éditeur, Hamelle souhaitant que chaque recueil totalise le chiffre rond de vingt mélodies. L’en-tête du poème lyrique, paru dans l’édition de 1872 des poèmes de Marc-Monnier (dont le nom est écrit ainsi, avec un trait d’union, par l’éditeur Lemerre), comporte les mots «Musique de F. Gratz» (Franz Gratz, 1803–1874, un compositeur suisse, autrefois célèbre, installé à Paris).

extrait des notes rédigées par Graham Johnson © 2005
Français: Hypérion

Other albums featuring this work

Fauré: La chanson d'Ève & other songs
CDA66320
Fauré: The Complete Songs, Vol. 1 - Au bord de l'eau
CDA67333Download only
Fauré: The Complete Songs, Vol. 2
Studio Master: SIGCD472Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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