|
Media Critics Magazine? |
|
|
Media Critics Magazine was launched on March 1st 2005!
Media Critics Magazine (MCM) is an internet publication for keeping up to date on Today's music, movies and books. We will be publishing daily reviews on different genres.
We are looking for regular Reviewers/writers in all categories (Music, Books Movies). If you think Media Critics will benefit from your editorial, please contact us at work@infoedit.net.
Although we are an unpaid publication - isn't it fun just to get published!
If you have any queries or questions contact us at critics@infoedit.net
We would love to hear from you.
|
|
|
|
|
For the Sheer Luxury of Beauty of Voice and Technique!
Susan Graham continues to grow as an artist, both in her inimitable operatic performances but especially in her warmly human and bracingly communicative recitals with piano collaboration. With this very beautiful recording of songs cycles by Chausson, Ravel and Debussy she combines the two - operatic and recital - and the result is some of the most stunning collaborations with voice and orchestra on CD today. Gush? Well, just listen to this well-conceived disc and try to escape the trance of enchantment.
The Chausson 'Poeme de l'amour et de la mer' is a series of heavily orchestrated songs, whose protagonist is a young man who meets and falls in love with a girl and returns a year later to discover the girl no longer is moved by him - not unlike the doubt, lust, longing and memory of Resnais' film 'Last Year at Marienbad'. Graham communicates the longing and ecstasy and ultimate devastation of the young man with intense feeling and gorgeous rich sound. Yan Pascal Tortelier conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra with sonorous swells of sound that never bury the voice and never completely give in to the excesses in Chausson's writing.
Best known of the works on this recording is the 'Sheherazade ' of Maurice Ravel. Here, moving among the three songs well known to every concertgoer, Graham demonstrates her seamless range of tone and color: though a mezzo-soprano by range she transports her gorgeous instrument into the realm of soprano with complete ease. Her French diction is perfect and she makes the poems come alive. If this reading does not erase all memories of such singers as Regine Crespin or Victoria de los Angeles as far as breathy French sensuousness, the uncanny beauty of her sound and her immersion in the texts creates a new standard. 'La Flute enchantee' is from another place of rarefied air!
The Debussy songs 'Le Livre de Baudelaire' are here performed with a new orchestration by contemporary composer John Adams! And if you fear that may be an incongruous pairing then fear not. The orchestral writing is in total sync with Debussy's haunting line. Graham again delivers lush, creamy tone with a true 'French sound'. It simply works.
Apart from the beauty of Susan Graham's artistry and Tortelier's sensitive collaboration the major contribution of this recording is in the thoughtful programming - three cycles by three French composers whose lives overlapped. This is the degree of challenging and rewarding ventures that will maintain the importance of classical music recordings.
Highly Recommended.
Grady Harp, March 05 |
|
| Rate this article |
|
The number of ratings received is 2. And the author is ALMOST worth a full BEER! |
Quick Links: Music reviews, Film reviews, Book reviews, Media Critics, Entertainment News
|
|
|
|
|
