Angèle Dubeau IMMERSION

 

IMMERSION

Angèle Dubeau / La Pietà GAME MUSIC

I have never placed limits on my choice of repertoire, and for this project, I reached toward a unique world that was creative and vibrant in its originality. In my quest to discover the gems of modern music, I listened to many works written and revisited by composers of great talent.

When I began my research, video games quickly emerged as a logical avenue of exploration. I have always strived to interest young people in classical music because I feel it has the power to touch everyone. Seeing the passion of young people for video games, I wanted to understand the secrets of their success and to evaluate their musical value.

On my most recent recording, I approached movie music without consideration for the images and scenes that inspired it, and I took the same tack in reviewing the gold mine that is video game music. I have assembled here the works that spoke to me, giving no real thought to the adventures they accompany.

I immersed myself in the worlds that created these excerpts, and I conveyed my new conception to the musicians of La Pietà, going into great detail to bring forth all of their beauty and power. Above all, I wanted to avoid distorting them, and my intention has been to preserve the form that initially won over video game aficionados while at the same time breathing new life into them.

So it is with great pleasure that I invite you to dive into the fantastical world of video games with me. (Angèle Dubeau)

Angèle Dubeau / La Pietà OVATION

“Music must not be the prerogative of the elite ; it belongs to everyone.” These words by Telemann have been my motto for a very long time. I like to think that music should be shared with as many people as possible, and it was in this spirit that I developed the concert program “One Last Time”, performed 33 times in Canada in the fall of 2017 and then on tour in Latin America in the winter of 2018. This album, recorded live at Quebec City’s Palais Montcalm in November 2017, features some of the most striking works that La Pietà has performed during its 21 years of existence. All of the selected works represent important moments I have experienced with my ensemble…

… when I first founded the orchestra, made up entirely of women, inspired by the young girls at the Ospedale de la Pietà, the Venice orphanage where music reigned supreme under the directorship of its famous maestro di coro Antonio Vivaldi…

… or playing George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody N^o 1, a work burgeoning with passion that reminds me of my studies in Bucharest, where I discovered how to make my violin sing, dance, cry, and speak.

… or more recently, a dozen years ago, when I created a series of musical portraits of contemporary composers whose signature styles engaged me so powerfully – artists such as Ludovico Einaudi, Philip Glass, and Max Richter, whose works on this album are now part of the modern music canon.

… or all the occasions when it has been my great privilege to share the stage with exceptional musicians and premiere new works. My precious partnerships with masters such as Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick and Japanese pianist and composer Joe Hisaishi – giants who have coloured my musical world – also appear on this album.

Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I have expressed myself through music, I have travelled through music, and it sustains me to this day.

I gave my first concert at the age of five, and 51 years later, I would like to say “thank you,” because after all these years, what fills me with joy is knowing that my music is there with you, both in your everyday life and in the special moments.

Thank you for all of these experiences. Enjoy! (Angèle Dubeau)

Angèle Dubeau / La Pietà PHILIP GLASS Portrait

As I said in a review of another Philip Glass recording “you know in advance what you are going to get with Philip Glass”. Even more so in the case of this recording, where some of the works - The Hours, Mishima and Company - are already quite known. 

The French-Canadian string ensemble La Pietà - all female, in case you hadn’t guessed - and their leader Angèle Dubeau present what is essentially a sampler of the accessible, more recent Glass. Does that mean it will only appeal for someone wishing to hesitantly dip their toe into the Glass pool and be of no interest to the Glass aficionado? Definitely not - the works are all complete as long as you count overtures and opening credits as individual pieces. Some lesser known pieces are included and the performances and acoustics are excellent. 

The overture for the “multimedia opera project” La Belle et al Bête (Beauty and the Beast) for piano and strings is the most dramatic and up-tempo music on the disc and gets proceedings off to a fine start. You can see the whole piece performed by Dubeau and La Pietà on Youtube. 

I regard the score for The Hours as one of the finest ever written, and this concerto-style arrangement by long-time Glass collaborator Michael Reisman allows a greater continuity than the original itself allows. 

I hadn’t heard The Secret Agent film-score before, and based on this haunting cello-dominated extract, I went searching for the complete music, which is available on Nonesuch and I am ordering it as I write. Echorus was written for Yehudi Meuhin and the sleeve-notes describe it as akin to a Baroque chaconne, and quotes Philip Glass “it is meant to evoke feelings of serenity and peace”, which it certainly achieves.  

Mishima and Company are respectively string quartets 3 and 2, presented here in their string orchestra versions. The former is more sombre, the latter dominated by the archetypal Glass motoric rhythms and the final eponymously titled movement of Mishima is quite beautiful. The disc ends as it began with piano joining the strings for the elegiac Closing, from Glassworks, and one of the first compositions intended to broaden the audience for Glass’s music. 

Detractors will say that there is little variation in atmosphere through the fifteen tracks on the disc, and that is true. However, as I said at the start, you already know that with this composer. In fact, the very constancy of the music’s mood makes this a recording that works at two different levels. Listen to it intently and you are rewarded by glorious melodies and the subtle variations that are his stock-in-trade, or have it playing in the background and soothe your troubled soul. 

Suffice to say in conclusion that this is one of the best CDs I have bought this year. (David J Barker, MusicWeb International)

Angèle Dubeau / La Pietà OVATION

Recorded live in concert, this album features works by Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter, Philip Glass, Ennio Morricone, George Enescu, Joe Hisaichi, Camille Saint-Saens and Srul Irving Glick. Angèle Dubeau writes of this release: “’Music must not be the prerogative of the elite, it belongs to everyone.’ These words by Telemann have been my motto for a very long time. I like to think that music should be shared with as many people as possible, and it was in this spirit that I developed the concert program “One Last Time”, performed 33 times in Canada in the fall of 2017 and then on tour in Latin America in the winter of 2018. This album, recorded live at Quebec City’s Palais Montcalm in November 2017, features some of the most striking works that La Pietà has performed during its 21 years of existence. I gave my first concert at the age of five, and 51 years later, I would like to say “thank you,” because after all these years, what fills me with joy is knowing that my music is there with you, both in your everyday life and in the special moments. Thank you for all of these experiences. Enjoy!”

Angèle Dubeau et La Pietà JEAN FRANÇAIX Gargantua et autres plaisirs

Jean Françaix (1912-1997) was something of a chronological anomaly. He came of age in the era when neo-Classicism was in vogue and the influence of Les Six was ascendant, and those trends came to inform the musical style that he continued to practice with little fluctuation throughout his long life. His Gargantua, for speaker and string orchestra, dates from 1971, the same year Elliott Carter wrote his Third String Quartet, but it could easily have been written in the 1930s, as could the other works recorded here, L'heure du Berger (1972) and Sérénade B E A (1955). The friendly harmonic language, melodic invention, formal clarity, and pervading tone of whimsicality set them far apart from just about any aspect of the prevailing modernism. The 40-minute Gargantua uses as its basis an absurd fable by Rabelais, and the music offers a pleasant, unobtrusive background to the narration. The text is in French, and no translation is provided so, it's likely to have limited impact on non-French speakers. The two purely instrumental works have a higher musical profile and are more immediately appealing. Without the constraint of keeping from covering the text, Françaix is less inhibited in his invention, and many of the movements are unabashedly dancelike, with a playful wit. Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau and her string ensemble La Pietà play with an appropriate elegance and delicacy. The sound is crisp and present. The album should appeal to fans of light, well-crafted music, particularly of the Gallic variety. (Stephen Eddins)