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Byron Fidetzis, Pazardzhik Symphony Orchestra, Tassis Christoyannis, Angelo Simos – Samaras: Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:55:33 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos
Remembered today for the Olympic Anthem, Spyridon Samaras was the most distinguished Greek composer of his day and the first to gain international recognition. By the time Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle was produced, Samaras was a well-established and much-admired opera composer in the Italian Romantic style. The narrative of the opera sees the mischievous plans of the Duke of Richelieu descending into a complex tangle of amorous deceptions, tests of faithfulness and the perils of duelling. The score for this world premiere recording has been painstakingly restored by Byron Fidetzis.
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Tassis Christoyannis, Jeff Cohen – Benjamin Godard: Mélodies (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:18 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
The mélodies of Benjamin Godard (1849-1895) are little-known, and yet, Godard was one of the most prolific composers in the genre. Focusing on opera after the success of his dramatic symphony Le Tasse in 1878, Godard composed several lyric works that overshadowed his 162 published songs. Today, they remain one of the most interesting parts of his catalogue. The pieces selected here by Tassis Christoyannis and Jeff Cohen, most of them recorded for the first time, illustrate the composer’s literary sensibilities.
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Tassis Christoyannis & Jeff Cohen – Charles Gounod: Mélodies (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:35 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Remembering Gounod as just a masterful composer of great French operas, it’s easy to forget that he also wrote, among many various pieces of work, close to one hundred and fifty melodies throughout is long and rich career. Surprisingly, almost one third of these pages were written in English (during his years in London, between 1870 and 1874), about fifteen of them are in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish and German. Most of them of course are in French, among which Tassis Christoyannis and Jeff Cohen selected twenty-four gems, a comprehensive array ranging from his very first published melody – his Où voulez-vous aller from 1839, the year of his Prix de Rome! – to his À une jeune Grecque of the utmost maturity, in 1884. The composer explored all of the styles he held dear, with all the eclecticism he’s famous for: French romanticism, German Lied, orientalism, old-fashioned archaic writing… Gounod was particularly sensitive to the words’ meaning as much as their sound, the back and forth of verses and the variety of periods, and excelled in finding a melodic movement to perfectly fit the inflexions of pronunciation, the expressive flow of speech and setting the perfect phrasing for an eloquent result. With him, unlike his illustrious elder Berlioz, music served the words, carried them and elevated them if possible. Let’s discover this beautiful pearl rosary, made of works we would love to hear in recital more often.
Read more![Tassis Christoyannis, Véronique Gens, Jeff Cohen - César Franck: Complete Songs and Duets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/17/b5j8jw2lxghgb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Tassis Christoyannis, Véronique Gens, Jeff Cohen – César Franck: Complete Songs and Duets (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:44:16 minutes | 1,88 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Bru Zane
The alluring voices of Tassis Christoyannis and Véronique Gens immerse the listener in the atmosphere of the nineteenth-century Parisian salons and the mélodies performed there. The composer and organist César Franck, famed for his instrumental music, proves himself equally skilled in setting poems by Musset, Hugo, Chateaubriand, Daudet and Dumas. This first complete recording of his works for voice and piano ranges over his entire creative life.
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Yann Beuron, Tassis Christoyannis, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Markus Poschner – Saint-Saëns: Mélodies avec orchestre (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:02 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
World premiere recording: Although the turn of the twentieth century marked the golden age of French song, the genre was generally accompanied on the piano and only rarely orchestrated by its composers. But Camille Saint-Saëns, a great lover of poetry, was also a champion of the orchestrated mélodie and the French coloristic style. He also wanted to counterbalance the overwhelming popularity of operatic arias in concert programmes. An immense admirer of Victor Hugo, Saint-Saëns set many of his poems to music, including L’Enlèvement, Rêverie, and Le Pas d’armes du Roi Jean, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Exoticism and a certain sense of the supernatural run through such songs as Danse macabre, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, but always heard nowadays either in its version for orchestra alone or performed by a singer with piano accompaniment. Of the twenty-five mélodies with orchestra listed in the catalogue of Saint-Saëns, nineteen are recorded here, all of them for the first time!
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