Stéphane Degout & Simon Lepper – Lieder & Balladen (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:16 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
“The mystery of the ballad comes from the way it is told” – Goethe. This fascinating repertory requires the performer to play each of the characters as he or she would in an opera.
Who better than Stéphane Degout to take up the challenge of plunging into the heart of German Romanticism? Fresh from winning a Victoire de la Musique in 2019, the French baritone truly embodies each of the protagonists in these shattering miniature dramas. Beside him here are a longstanding partner and two exceptional guests.
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Robyn Allegra Parton & Simon Lepper – Burnished Gold (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:54 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orchid Classics
Soprano Robyn Allegra Parton and pianist Simon Lepper perform an album inspired by the burnished gold leaf and sensual contours of Klimt’s Art-Nouveau ‘Vienna Secession’ movement, with music reflecting that aesthetic including songs by Richard Strauss, Alma Mahler, Johanna Muller-Hermann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alban Berg and Joseph Marx – a composer about whom Lepper recently curated a series at Wigmore Hall. These are works that occupy a fascinating realm between the romantic and the modern, so that sensuous, brooding and dark-hued atmospheres are blended with rich textures and radiant harmonies. Described by Opernwelt as ‘captivating, astonishing, overwhelming’, award-winning British soprano Robyn Allegra Parton specialises in this repertoire, and Simon Lepper is one of the finest song accompanists in the world.
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Christopher Purves, Simon Lepper – My Soul, What Fear You? (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 55:54 minutes | 1,72 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Kings College Cambridge
This is the first song album by the well-known bass-baritone Christopher Purves, who is accompanied here by one of Britain’s finest pianists, Simon Lepper. In addition to piano songs, Bach’s aria Ich habe genug is presented as well as excerpts from Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook and Kurt Weill’s Berliner Requiem in original arrangements with accordion, saxophone, guitar, flute and double bass.
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Elizabeth Llewellyn & Simon Lepper – Heart & Hereafter: Collected Songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:32 minutes | 878 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orchid Classics
Known for her vivid portrayals and full, distinctive voice, Elizabeth Llewellyn has established herself internationally as a dramatic and vocal artist of distinction. She has chosen to offer listeners something new by devoting her debut album to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, much of it never recorded before. To poetry by Christina Rossetti, Coleridge-Taylor’s Six Sorrow Songs and A Lament are almost all world-premiere recordings.
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Cora Burggraaf, Simon Lepper – Folk Stories – Songs by Beethoven, Britten, Mahler, Respighi, Sibelius a.o. (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:03:03 minutes | 4,98 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Not long ago, I organized a party that some fellow singers came to after a performance in Salzburg. If you are lucky enough that it isn’t raining, the weather can be beautiful in Salzburg, and this was one of those sultry summer evenings. The barbecue worked well, the beer and wine flowed. A few Russian and Ukrainian singers had come and brought their own bottle of vodka. It wasn’t long before they finished it and went on to beer.
It was a long night. At about two, when just a small group was left, the singing finally began. (It takes a while before a singer will spontaneously break out in song. If you ask a professional singer to “Sing something for us”, you’re not likely to get your wish. It must be some sort of professional deformity.) First came the national anthems. Then the Ukrainian singer began to sing — with full voice and total devotion – other folk songs from his country, and soon his wife joined in. Everyone sat in silence, listening.
The melancholy of the music took hold of the listeners and even the singer himself. Maybe it had to do with the feeling of nostalgia that singing folk songs evokes, the feeling that you belong somewhere? Or maybe it was the straightfoward and simple presentation of the songs. In any case, they fitted in perfectly — in the wee hours of the morning and with empty bottles surrounding us.
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Karen Cargill, Simon Lepper – Alma & Gustav Mahler: Lieder (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:32 minutes | 917 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records
Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill has recorded large-scale vocal-orchestral music in the past; she participated in a fine LSO Live recording of Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ under the late Colin Davis. So nothing quite prepares the listener for how good this recording is. One might be drawn to it for the recordings of the rare lieder of Alma Mahler, or actually Alma Schindler, for she composed them before her marriage to Mahler in 1902 and his decision to forbid her to compose. They were published in 1910 after Alma began an affair with Walter Gropius and Gustav was keen to appease her. The five songs are modest in scale but deserve to be heard more often, and they resemble Gustav Mahler’s lieder less than the early work of Webern. Cargill’s performance is of just the dimension that would have been required for a Viennese song evening, and her enthusiasm for the material is palpable. The Gustav Mahler songs include the Rückert Lieder of 1901-1902, the four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen of the 1880s, and the “Urlicht” movement from the giant Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”). “Urlicht” is a song from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection, and many of these songs have a sort of mystically expanded folkish element and found their way into Mahler’s symphonies. Cargill is extraordinary in her control over the scope of these songs, sustaining them over their heavenly length while not breaking them out of their chamber dimensions. Sample the Rückert song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (track 10, “I have come loose from the world”) for something that’s both as close as one can come to an introduction in just six minutes to the essential Mahler and very beautiful in itself. A superb job from a singer who is getting her due. –James Manheim
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