Lucile Richardot Un Lieu à Soi

For the problem of ‘genuine’ and ‘spurious’ works by Pergolesi has preoccupied musicologists for centuries. Of the approximately one hundred and fifty works that circulate under his name, he probably composed only thirty or so. Most of them were attributed to him posthumously, since publishers such as Bremner hoped to drum up better business thereby.

This recording was made under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw in December 2019, two months before his death. A few weeks before that, he had called Thomas Dieltjens, artistic director of Het Collectief, to tell him: Since our concert in mid-July 2019, Das Lied von der Erde has constantly been on my mind. I am totally fascinated by it and discover new things in it every day. It would be a dream if we could record this music with the exceptional cast of musicians and soloist singers of the Saintes festival, and preferably the sooner the better. Words failed, as can be gathered from the many concert reviews they received.

Few twentieth-century creators have been as inventive as Berio in their relationship with popular and ancestral traditions – drawing material as he did from the hits by The Beatles and the soundscapes of urban streets and markets. Here Geoffroy Jourdain paints the portrait of an explorer with a passion for the human voice. Truculent and volcanic in Sequenza III (performed with panache by French mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot), lyrical and caressing in E si fussi pisci, solemn and spellbinding in Cries of London.

Sa vie s’effritait. En l’espace de trois ans, l’auteure à succès du New York Times et enseignante spirituelle du sixième sens Sonia Choquette, avait pleuré la mort subite de deux membres de sa famille, vu son mariage imploser et perdu le soutien de deux collègues en qui elle avait mis sa confiance. …