Maia Vidal

On An Overgrown Path, Leoš Janáček’s 15 pieces-spanning piano cycle, is here presented in a reshaped guise, arranged for string orchestra and interpreted by the Camerata Zürich under lead violinist Igor Karsko’s direction. This is the premiere recording of the orchestral adaption. In this programme, Janáček’s cycle is bookended by Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale St. Wenceslas and Antonín Dvořák’s Notturno – pieces that are thematically connected to the folkloric elements found in Janáček’s composition. French writer Maïa Brami wrote poems to accompany the new arrangement of On An Overgrown Path, and their recorded versions, spoken by the writer herself, are included on the album, contextualizing the cycle with inventive analogies to Janáček’s life.

Master of 18th-century French opera, Rameau wrote for the stage for three decades (1733-1764). His thirty or so operatic works give considerable space to the haute-contre voice, the quintessence of most of the title roles: Platée, Dardanus, Hippolyte, Pygmalion… Mathias Vidal, a brilliant representative of this haute-contre tessitura, is one of its foremost specialists. Having sung the majority of Rameau’s operas on stage, he is an obvious paradigm for their characters. Together with Gaétan Jarry, he has conceived a programme of the most dazzling and expressive arias, to which have been added scenes accompanied by a chorus.

Christian Escoudé, electric guitar; Jacques Vidal, bass; Aldo Romano, drums, acoustic guitar. Recorded at Emmequattro Studio, Roma, December 1979. Producers, Alberto Alberti, Sergio Veschi. Executive producer, Sergio Veschi.

Tim Maia's comeback album after amazing experiments of Racional, the only flaw of this set of 11 focused songs is that some of them fade out much sooner than we would like! The song Rodésia here was a hit, and the English-language "Nobody Can Live For Ever" also provided the title for the Luaka Bop compilation of Tim's material.