KARITA MATTILA

 

Helsinki Recital

 

DUPARC L'Invitation au voyage, Romance de Mignon, Au pays où se fait la guerre, Chanson triste, Phidylé

RACHMANINOV Ne poy, krasavitsa, Sumerki, Otrïvok iz A. Myusse, Muza, Kakoye schast'ye

SAARIAHO Quatre Instants [1st RECORDING]

DVORAK Gypsy Melodies

 

Karita Mattila (soprano)

Martin Katz (piano)

 

"What an evening, what a show!" Helsinki Sanomat

 

This SACD contains a rare recital performance of star soprano Karita Mattila in her native Finland. In front of an electrified audience, the best-selling Finnish artist in classical music performed in sold-out concerts at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in October 2006.

 

The centrepiece of the featured programme is the ecstatic song cycle Quatre Instants, a musical setting by Karita Mattila's compatriot, Kaija Saariaho, of poetry by Amin Maalouf. Described as 'a quasi-operatic monologue that plunges into the erotic, extreme territory that Mattila conveys so well', Quatre Instants was written for Mattila in 2002 and premièred by her in Paris and London to international acclaim. This SACD recording represents the first commercial release of the piece.

 

Described by Musical America as "the most electrifying singing actress of our day, the kind of performer who renews an ageing art form and drives the public into frenzies", Karita Mattila is today's most exciting lyric dramatic soprano, and one of Ondine's key singing artists along with Soile Isokoski.  Leonie Rysanek, a true prima donna, repeatedly reinvented herself, from her early sensational success when she was barely 25 to her eventual retirement at the age of 70 in 1996. After a series of spectacular débuts at many of the world's leading opera houses, she suffered a number of crises that she overcame, often changing fach, before finally going on to explore the character roles that she would make her own.The present collection of excerpts from her 40-year association with the Vienna State Opera conveys something of the intensity and multifaceted aspect of that career. The first CD opens with her youthfully impulsive portrait of Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, recorded at a performance at the Theater an der Wien with George London, and it ends with her incomparable Kostelnicka in Janácek's Jenufa.The second CD pays tribute to Rysanek's attributes as a Straussian including three versions of Die Frau ohne Schatten where Rysanek is heard in her signature role as the Empress. Her radiant top notes shine in Ariadne's 'Es gibt ein Reich', while the excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier illustrate the parlando qualities of her singing. Orfeo's compilation ends with the final scene from Salome under Karl Böhm, a performance well calculated to keep alive our abiding interest in Rysanek as an iconic figure on the operatic stage.

 

CONCERT REVIEW (Saariaho): "A sensational recital by a sensational artist" The Guardian

 

Ondine SACD ODE11005