Duparc Complete Songs
Some really beautiful singing, but what of engagement with the [poem] poems?
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: (Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc
Label: Timpani
Magazine Review Date: /2000
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 64
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 1C1053
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (L')Invitation au voyage |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Extase |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| (La) Vague et la cloche |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| Élégie |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Sérénade florentine |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Lamento |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| Chanson triste |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Soupir |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Testament |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| (La) Fuite |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Guy Flechter, Tenor Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| (Le) Galop |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| Sérénade |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| Romance de Mignon |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| Au pays où se fait la guerre |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| (Le) Manoir de Rosemonde |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Vincent le Texier, Baritone |
| Phidylé |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
| (La) Vie antérieure |
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer
(Marie Eugène) Henri Duparc, Composer François Kerdoncuff, Piano Mireille Delunsch, Soprano |
Author: rnichols
Mireille Delunsch takes top billing, in both quantity (singing in 11 of the 17 songs) and quality. She has a particularly delectable top G that she floats to fine effect – and at the start of L’invitation au voyage she even nuances it with the marked diminuendo on ‘ensemble’ which so many sopranos prefer not to notice. Simply as an instrument, her voice is well produced, in tune and almost continuously easy on the ear.
And there’s the rub. Does her singing make me engage with the sentiments, mostly dark or dreamlike, of the poems Duparc set? I can’t honestly say it does, by and large.L’invitation shows her at her best, but as the disc progressed, I found I was missing any illuminating shaft of vocal colour, any powerful determination to make us feel that one word might be more significant than another. Comparing her version of Chanson triste with that of Maggie Teyte and Gerald Moore (EMI, 9/94), I find not only that Teyte’s words are clearer (only partly thanks to very close miking) but that the narrative of the song is brought to life: as she dreams of her lover taking her head on his lap, her rendering of the word ‘genoux’ sends a shiver through me every time. On some indefinable level, Delunsch’s singing preserves its polite distance from these tortured, late 19th-century goings-on. She also, for recording purposes, needs to learn to breathe in more quietly.
Vincent le Texier takes on six of the more robust songs. Appreciation of vocal timbre is notoriously a subjective matter, so I cannot claim to be coolly critical when I say that I just don’t like the sound he makes. It’s a big ‘yo-ho’ Peter Dawson kind of voice, and to my ears utterly wrong for most of this repertoire. True, he brings impressive force to La vague et la cloche and to Le manoir de Rosemonde, the early Le galop goes with a swing, and his mezza voce is well managed (and welcome), but – no, this is not for me. Again, I get little sense of a real person who has suffered and who bears the scars.
Francois Kerdoncuff’s accompanying is a bit solid, but rarely intrusive, apart from an unfortunate accelerando in bar 4 of Elegie which destroys the mood. The recording is rather clangy and over-spacious.'
And there’s the rub. Does her singing make me engage with the sentiments, mostly dark or dreamlike, of the poems Duparc set? I can’t honestly say it does, by and large.
Vincent le Texier takes on six of the more robust songs. Appreciation of vocal timbre is notoriously a subjective matter, so I cannot claim to be coolly critical when I say that I just don’t like the sound he makes. It’s a big ‘yo-ho’ Peter Dawson kind of voice, and to my ears utterly wrong for most of this repertoire. True, he brings impressive force to La vague et la cloche and to Le manoir de Rosemonde, the early Le galop goes with a swing, and his mezza voce is well managed (and welcome), but – no, this is not for me. Again, I get little sense of a real person who has suffered and who bears the scars.
Francois Kerdoncuff’s accompanying is a bit solid, but rarely intrusive, apart from an unfortunate accelerando in bar 4 of Elegie which destroys the mood. The recording is rather clangy and over-spacious.'
Duparc Complete Songs
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