GREAT RECORDINGS phase 15

RAVEL: SHÉHÉRAZADE · 5 MÉLODIES POPULAIRES GRECQUES
5 MÉLODIES HÉBRAÏQUES · CHANTS POPULAIRES
DEBUSSY: CHANSON DE BILITIS · FÊTES GALANTES · NOËL DES ENFANTS
QUI N’ONT PLUS DE MAISON · LIA’S ARIA (‘L’ENFANT PRODIGUE’)
DUPARC: L’INVITATION AU VOYAGE · PHIDYLÉ
Victoria de los Angeles
Gonzalo Soriano
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire/Georges Prêtre

3 45821 2
(Angel: 3 45824 2)
Recorded 1962 & 1966
Stereo/ADD
73 minutes

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‘A very beautiful and very enjoyable recital of French orchestral songs, sensitively accompanied. The coupling has this justly adored singer, in excellent form, in further songs by Ravel and Debussy with Soriano as the sympathetic piano accompanist.’
(The Gramophone)
Awards: Timbre de Platine d’Opéra International & Orphée d’Or de l’Académie du disque lyrique, France

The great and much loved Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles died in Barcelona in January 2005, aged 81. Hers was one of the most beautiful of all late 20th-century voices and happily EMI was able to record her throughout her career and in virtually all of her extensive repertoire. Not surprisingly, this latest Great Recording of the Century adds a further title to the 12 in which she already features in this series.

This new disc is a compilation of all of Victoria de los Angeles’s EMI recordings of songs with orchestral and piano accompaniment by Ravel, Debussy and Duparc, a repertoire to which she brought not only her lovely voice and great artistry but also an almost instinctive understanding of an idiom – French song – that eludes many other Spanish singers.

Ravel’s exotic song cycle Shéhérazade opens a famous orchestral recital made with Georges Prêtre in Paris in 1962. The composer’s settings of Greek and Hebrew folksongs are followed by four more popular songs, this time with piano accompaniment, played by Gonzalo Soriano and recorded in Barcelona in 1966.

Next, from the same sessions, Soriano accompanies Victoria de los Angeles in a sequence of seven of the best known chansons by Debussy, before Prêtre and the orchestra return for the final items in the programme: an aria from Debussy’s cantata L’Enfant prodigue, winner of the Prix de Rome in 1884, and two exquisite songs by Henri Duparc, a contemporary of Ravel and Debussy, whose intensely self-critical approach to composition produced only 21 published works (including 16 songs).