Barbara Hendricks, Love Derwinger & Swedish Chamber Ensemble

Two arias include obbtigato instruments. The violin version of the better known setting of the same text with piano obbligato k505. It is the soprano version of the long aria sung by an mezzo or tenor Idamante in Idomeneo. While not quite as phenomenally beautiful as k505, it is both lively and demanding, requiring virtuoso contributions from conductor, orchestra, violinist and soprano. For k505, best that I have heard is Ameling/Dalton Baldwin/Edo de Waart (see my review). Hendricks/Tate/Jose Luis Garcia and the ECO are equally good in the violin setting.

The Austrian composer/conductor HK Gruber and the Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger are collaborators of long standing, whose previous projects in common include the highly successful trumpet concerto Aerial. Like that piece, Busking was also composed at the instigation of Hardenberger. In his own liner notes, Gruber relates how the piece, which is here released on disc for the first time, came into being.

Throughout her fifty year career Barbara Hendricks has shown herself to be one of the greatest champions of French song. This has always held a special place in her repertory and in her heart, as have German lieder, Scandinavian and Spanish songs (not to mention jazz and blues); her musical world has no limits. For this new recording made in 2016, the Swedish soprano pays homage both to her singing teacher and mentor, the great American mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, and to the creative genius of Hector Berlioz. If the Nuits d’été have long formed part of her repertory, the two cantatas Herminie and Cléopâtre are new.

"Throughout her fifty year career Barbara Hendricks has shown herself to be one of the greatest champions of French song. This has always held a special place in her repertory and in her heart, as have German lieder, Scandinavian and Spanish songs (not to mention jazz and blues); her musical world has no limits. For this new recording made in 2016, the Swedish soprano pays homage both to her singing teacher and mentor, the great American mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, and to the creative genius of Hector Berlioz. If the Nuits d’été have long formed part of her repertory, the two cantatas Herminie and Cléopâtre are new."

One of the most celebrated singers in the world, Barbara Hendricks was invited by Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Festival, to take her first steps in the world of jazz in 1994. In fact, what could have been more natural? This music has lived in her for ever, it is part of her roots, of someone who first started singing with the Negro spirituals in the church of her father, a pastor in Arkansas.

The best of that rather extraordinary body of music written, often hurriedly, to meet the ephemeral needs of the American entertainment industry between the two world wars has proved durable beyond all expectation. Each of the songs on the present recording is characterised by melodic originality of a most personal kind. George Gershwin’s idiom was tinged from the beginning with jazz and the blues, and this had an effect on his rhythm and harmony, both of which still possess much piquancy.
In most cases the lyrics are by the composer’s brother, Ira, and they are almost equally accomplished, matching the extremely varied moods of the music well…