专辑简介

This is a lovely recital -- Hendricks at the height of her powers, singing music she was born to sing, idiomatically and with a gorgeous shimmer to the voice and insinuating inflections that convey Faure's quite particular combination of chaste reserve and sensuality. The famous cycle "La bonne Chanson" may not have all the textual acuity of its recorded rivals, but Hendricks' version of "Les roses d'Ispahan" is worth the price of the disk many times over. Faure is the great 19th-century song writer, a composer with a positive gift for evoking mood or setting an atmosphere with the bare minimum of means, and "La bonne chanson is his song-cycle masterpiece. Anna Russel, the famous comedienne, says that the French art song features "magnificent poetry set to rather wispy music." Well, this certainly doesn't apply to Faure, whose style, though often gentle and seductive, is as substantial as it gets. American soprano Barbara Hendricks is one of the most popular singers in France. She sings the language like a native, and her quicksilver voice, with its characteristic, tight vibrato lends the music an appropriate aura of barely suppressed passion.