MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Crotchet


Marianne Fiset (soprano)
Maurice RAVEL (1875–1937)
Shéhérazade (1903) [16:56]
Claude DEBUSSY (1862–1918)
Proses lyriques (1894) [21:01]
Antonin DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Song to the Moon (Rusalka), op.114 (1900) [7:31]

Marianne Fiset (soprano), Marie-Ève Scarfone (piano)
Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne/Jean-Philippe Tremblay
rec. 19-21 September 2007, Église Saint-Benoît de Mirabel, Québec, DDD
ANALEKTA AN28761 [45:28] 

Experience Classicsonline


Québec
-born Marianne Fiset has recently won several prizes – the First Grand Prize of the Montreal International Musical Competition, the Jean A Charles Prize for the best Canadian artist, the Joseph Rouleau Prize for best artist from Québec, the Poulenc French Song Award and the People’s Choice Award in May 2007. More recently she was named Young Soloist 2008 by the Public Francophonie Radios (Radio France, Radio Suisse–Romande, RTBF Belgium and Radio–Canada). The best news of all is that she thoroughly deserves everything she has received for she has a voice of power and purity, strength but gentleness, and this recital is a real winner. 

Hearing Ravel’s orchestral song–cycle Shéhérazade with piano accompaniment is an ear–opener for we can concentrate, entirely, on the voice without being distracted by Ravel’s rich orchestration. This is very helpful when hearing a new voice for the first time. The long first song, Asie is built gradually, the descriptions of Asia slowly coming into focus until the big climax, at the words “Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine” (I would like to see death caused by love or even by hate), she lets loose a superbly sustained top register, full of emotion and wonder. The climax, which is fully scored in the orchestral version fares well in this performance, it’s obviously not piano music but it worksl. The coda, full of the thoughts of story telling is well controlled and is tinged with fatigue. Fabulous singing! It’s hard to believe that a song called The Enchanted Flute could work without a solo flute but so sensitive is Marie–Ève Scarfone’s playing that I was never conscious of something missing in this performance. 

“I waken…
And hear outside
The song of a flute pour forth
By turns sadness and joy.” 

Fiset sings, imagining her lover playing the instrument and the notes being kisses landing on her cheek. L’indifférent (The Indifferent One) is all restraint, but not despair at parting. 

“…remain
On my doorstep and I will watch you depart,
Making a last graceful gesture to me…” 

Here Fiset hits the right tone of I couldn’t care less/I want you but can’t tell you and the short instrumental epilogue sounds as if the loved one were walking into the distance. 

Debussy’s Proses lyriques is an early set of four songs to texts by the composer himself. He was well acquainted with impressionist painters and Symbolist poets so it is, perhaps, no surprise that Debussy would, at some point, create some words of his own to set to music. Certainly these words are highly perfumed, but the music isn’t, and in the long run it might be best to ignore the words and simply enjoy the wonderful songs as pure music. After all, Debussy wrote, “…Good heavens, music is the dream from which the veil is lifted! It is not even the expression of feeling, it is feeling itself.” So as Debussy writes, 

“Dusk falls like tattered
White silk on the sea
The waves chatter like silly
Little girls let out of school
In their lustrous frilly
Green silk dresses.” 

he sets the words to music of such insouciance that we are not concerned with the meaning of the words, rather the sound they make when wedded to the music. This is a fine performance.

For some strange reason the disk ends with Song to the Moon from Rusalka. It sits uncomfortably beside two such strong works of French impressionism, and it seems very old hat indeed! It’s very lovely but this isn’t the place for it. The Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, under its director Jean–Philippe Tremblay accompany well, and I’d love to hear it in some symphonic repertoire for their playing is very first–rate and well worth hearing.

 

This is every inch Fiset’s disk and it’s a good debut. This is a voice which will go far and I do hope that she will not give all her time to the opera for there are some of us who treasure song and there simply aren’t enough singers today giving us good song recitals.

 

The sound is very good, the balance between voice and piano, and orchestra, is excellent. The notes are good too. Indeed, everything about this disk makes it well worth having.
 
Bob Briggs
 


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.