Composer: Claude Achille Debussy, Franz Xaver Gruber, Jake Heggie, Guillaume Lekeu, Richard Strauss
Performer: Joyce DiDonato, Brentano Quartet
Orchestra:
Conductor:
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Erato
Catalogue: 9029564219
Release: 2018
Size: 1.18 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Strauss: Schlichte Weisen, Op. 21 (Transc. Steinberg for Voice & String Quartet)
01. II. Du meines Herzens Krönelein
02. I. All mein’ Gedanken
Strauss: Acht Gedichte aus ‘Letzte Blätter’, Op. 10 (Transc. Steinberg for Voice & String Quartet)
03. III. Die Nacht
Strauss: Schlichte Weisen, Op. 21 (Transc. Steinberg for Voice & String Quartet)
04. III. Ach Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden
Strauss: Lieder, Op. 29 (Transc. Steinberg for Voice & String Quartet)
05. I. Traum durch die Dämmerung
06. Lekeu: Molto adagio sempre cantante doloroso
Debussy: Trois chansons de Bilitis (Transc. Heggie for Voice & String Quartet)
07. I. La Flûte de Pan
08. II. La Chevelure
09. III. Le Tombeau des naïades
Heggie: Camille Claudel – Into the Fire
10. Prelude – Awakening
11. I. Rodin
12. II. La Valse
13. III. Shakuntala
14. IV. La petite châtelaine
15. V. The Gossips
16. VI. L’age mûr
17. VII. Epilogue – Jessie Lipscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montdevergues Asylum, 1929
Strauss: Vier Lieder Op. 27
18. IV. Morgen! (Transc. Steinberg for Voice & String Quartet)
19. Gruber: Silent Night
Recorded live at London’s celebrated Wigmore Hall, this captivating recital by Joyce DiDonato and the Brentano Quartet was conceived around Jake Heggie’s song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, a work written for DiDonato – she describes it as “one of most moving projects I’ve ever been part of”. Songs by Debussy and Strauss and a quartet movement by Guillaume Lekeu complete the programme, which prompted the Financial Times to write that “the beauty and range” of DiDonato’s singing “are surely now at their impressive peak.”
The sculptor Camille Claudel, radical experimentalist and lover and possible influencer of Rodin, has fascinated artists in various media ever since she was institutionalized under controversial circumstances. She has been played on film by both Isabelle Adjani and Juliette Binoche. Now it’s the turn of American composer Jake Heggie, who wrote the titular song cycle here for the present performer, American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato. The text by Gene Scheer, depicting several major artworks and turning points in Claudel’s life, is highly evocative, and Heggie matches it with music that’s complementary to the words and extremely flattering to DiDonato’s voice. Sample “Shakuntala,” which brings to life and into time Claudel’s flowing, passionate sculpture of the same name. More radical than Heggie’s work is the decision to let its medium, the combination of soprano and string quartet, “bleed” into the Richard Strauss and Debussy songs on the program, which are arranged for the same combination. Your mileage may vary on this, but in the live performance at London’s Wigmore Hall, it helped build to Heggie’s portrayal of Claudel’s obsessive inner world. The audience’s rapturous response to all this is retained, as are DiDonato’s two encores, which have the relaxed quality (note the humorous false start of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer) of celebration after a job well done. Recommended.