HECTOR BERLIOZ

Nuits d'été

 

MAURICE RAVEL

Shéhérazade, 5 Greek popular songs

 

Bernarda Fink (mezzo)

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Kent Nagano

 

Bernarda Fink, Kent Nagano and the musicians of the DSO Berlin invite you to a recital of mélodies bathed in typically French sensuality.

 

Sixty years separate the Nuits d'été from Shéhérazade, yet it seems as if time has been abolished, leaving a single conception that stands above mere stylistic differences: the sumptuous sound characteristic of Berlioz' orchestration, whose Mediterranean strains find an echo a little farther east in the music of Ravel . . .

 

The origins of the Cinq mélodies populaires grecques were modest. Ravel intended merely to add an unobtrusive piano accompaniment to these Greek folksongs for performance at a lecture in February 1904. Manuel Rosenthal made the orchestral versions in 1935, under the watchful eye of the composer, who had by that time lost his creative faculties.

 

Bernarda Fink's voice gleams with a newfound metal timbre in this repertoire and her French is idiomatic. She has sung in numerous opera productions and has made over 50 recordings ranging from Monteverdi to Brahms and Bruckner, many of which have won awards, such as Caldara's Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo and Handel's Giulio Cesare and, more recently, La clemenza di Tito [Classical Brits]and a selection of Lieder by Brahms (Editor's Choice, May 2007).

 

Harmonia Mundi HMC901932