Performer: Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Erato
Catalogue: 5419775146
Release: 2023
Size: 1.77 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. d’Ambruys: Le doux silence de nos bois
02. Hahn: Néère
03. Dutronc: Le temps de l’amour
04. Satie: Gnossienne No. 1
05. Charpentier: Chanson à danser celle qui fait mon tourment, H. 450
06. Charpentier: Auprès du feu l’on fait l’amour, H. 446
07. Charpentier: Tristes déserts, H. 469
08. Messager: L’Amour masque: ‘J’ai deux amants’
09. Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1
10. Lambert: Ma bergère est tendre et fidelle
11. Hahn: A Chloris
12. Charpentier: Sans frayeur dans ce bois, H.467
13. Visée: Suite for lute in D minor: Sarabande
14. Renard: Le premier bonheur du jour
15. Camus: On n’entend rien
16. Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande: Mes longs cheveux
17. Lambert: Ombre de mon amant
18. Lambert: Vos mépris chaque jour
19. Visée: Suite for lute in D minor: Chaconne
20. Barbara: Dis, quand reviendras-tu?
21. Camus: Laissez durer la nuit
22. Offenbach: Amours divins (from La Belle Helène)
French love songs from three centuries, interspersed with reflective lute solos, constitute an Idylle for mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and lutenist Thomas Dunford. As they explain: “The emotions of love are explored in different forms – languor, desire, fascination, happiness.” The word ‘idyll’, evoking a blissful, tranquil experience, derives from Ancient Greece and poetry on a pastoral theme. Desandre and Dunford spin a thematic and musical thread between eras and styles, starting with a sequence of 10 airs de cour from the 17th century. Spanning the era from the 1860s to the 1920s are arias and songs by Offenbach, Debussy, Hahn and Messager, and the album then fast-forwards to the 1960s and two iconic French chanteuses, Barbara and Françoise Hardy. Dunford supplies instrumental interludes in the form of two dances by Robert de Visée, a court musician for both Louis XIV and Louis XV, and Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 and Gnossienne No 1.