Lea Desandre - Idylle
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VARIOUS COMPOSERS
Lea Desandre - Idylle
Lea Desandre (mezzo) Thomas Dunford (lute)
[ Erato / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 13 October 2023
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 ten 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.
"Relentlessly beautiful, extremely French, and restricted to the sounds of voice and lute, the program can feel flattened, yet you'd be hard-pressed to resist its sexy allure and intimacy." New York Times
"This is a stonkingly good album. It makes me wonder: what exactly are these enviously intelligent, inventive and generous musicians drinking?" Gramophone Editor's Choice (Awards Issue)
"It was a toss-up between this and Karim Sulayman and Sean Shibe's conceptually similar Broken Branches, but Idylle pips it for the range of expression, control, and purity of soprano Desandre's singing, which she uses on these French love songs spanning several centuries. It's not every day you hear Satie played on the lute, either." Richard Betts. NZ Listener
Tracks:
d'Ambruys: Le doux silence de nos bois
Hahn, R: Néère
Dutronc: Le temps de l'amour
Satie: Gnossienne No. 1
Charpentier, M-A: Chanson à danser celle qui fait mon tourment, H. 450
Charpentier, M-A: Auprès du feu l'on fait l'amour, H. 446
Charpentier, M-A: Tristes déserts, H. 469
Messager: L'Amour masque: 'J'ai deux amants'
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1
Lambert, M: Ma bergère est tendre et fidelle
Hahn, R: A Chloris
Charpentier, M-A: Sans frayeur dans ce bois, H.467
Visée: Suite for lute in D minor: Sarabande
Jean Renard: Le premier bonheur du jour
Camus, S: On n'entend rien
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande: Mes longs cheveux
Lambert, M: Ombre de mon amant
Lambert, M: Vos mépris chaque jour
Visée: Suite for lute in D minor: Chaconne
Barbara: Dis, quand reviendras-tu?
Camus, S: Laissez durer la nuit
Offenbach: Amours divins (from La Belle Helène)
