Marie-Claude Chappuis / Swiss Orchestra / Lena-Lisa Wüstendörfer JOACHIM RAFF Traumkönig und sein Lieb AUGUST WALTER Sinfonie Es-Dur

 

TRAUMKÖNIG UND SEIN LIEB - SINFONIE ES-DUR

 

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN The 9 Symphonies

THE 9 SYMPHONIES

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / Bernard Labadie TELEMANN Miriways

MIRIWAYS

Marie-Claude Chappuis & Friends AU COEUR DES ALPES

My mother often recalls how much I loved to sing Là-haut sur la montagne when I was just three years old. I’m sure I learned to yodel when I was still in the womb, listening to her singing the eresen- Jodel wherever she went. My sisters and I sang from a very early age both on stage and in church with our father, who conducted several different choirs. 

So whenever anyone asks me when I learned to sing, I always say, “I never learned how to sing – I came into the world singing!” 

Folk songs were part of our everyday life at home and continue to be part of my life on stage. They’re my inspiration and I hope I can always sing with the sense of naturalness that is so key to them. The composer Robert Schumann once said, “Listen carefully to all folk songs; they’re a rich source of the most beautiful melodies, and will open your eyes to the character of different nations.” 

When Martin Korn from Sony Music asked me if I would record some Swiss folk songs, I threw myself into the project straightaway. I chose pieces from all four regions of Switzerland, opting for music with which I feel a particular emotional connection – many of my choices are songs I used to sing as a child. I came up with a musical concept for each of them and soon every song had its own shape and colour. 

I asked Luca Pianca, one of my most valued musical collaborators, to help me and accompany me on this project. He responded with enormous enthusiasm, writing lots of arrangements and bringing with him the fabulous musicians of his Ensemble Claudiana. I’m delighted to say I’m also accompanied by Alphorn and accordion, as well as being joined on the album by the Chœur des Armaillis de la Gruyère – singer friends from my home region – and by my wonderful mother. 

I hope you enjoy these songs and this musical journey around Switzerland! (Marie-Claude Chappuis)

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN Symphony 9

It was astonishing, Debussy wrote in La Revue blanche on 1 May 1901, that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had not been buried beneath the mass of prose that it had provoked: Debussy’s comment on Beethoven’s symphony is almost as famous as the work with which it deals. The tumultuous applause at the end of the first performance had barely died away before critics were already laying into the composer and his music. 

The final movement in particular gave rise to a debate that continues to reverberate to the present day. Is the deployment of the human voice a liberating blow struck in the name of the purely instrumental symphony? Is this final movement brilliantly inspired? Or was it a “blunder”, as the bold composer himself is reported to have said about this fourth and final movement?

Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU Pygmalion

Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion’s despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18^th century dances. Like Ovid’s Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau’s greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet.