Thomas Oliemans – Formidable! (French Chansons) (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Thomas Oliemans – Formidable! (French Chansons) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:28 minutes | 2,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics

The list of singers from the classical sphere who can put popular songs across well is quite a bit shorter than one might think. Renée Fleming, who had early experience in jazz, can do it, and a few others, but it’s rarely done as well as it is here by baritone Thomas Oliemans, who grew up with the French popular chanson. In one way, he moves away from his classical training; his purring lower register is not that of an operatic baritone but that of a crooner, a distinctly pop phenomenon. Consider his version of Barbara’s L’Île aux mimosas, where he has to hang out at the bottom for most of the song and seems absolutely comfortable there. In another way, though, this is a classical album and not an attempt to crack the pop charts (although it certainly could do so if marketed that way). Relying on a variety of arrangers, Oliemans brings lovely chamber orchestra renditions of these French song classics by the likes of Jacques Brel, Charles Trenet, and Michel Legrand, accompanied by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, sometimes with a quintessentially French accordion. Oliemans is a sensitive text interpreter, and for non-French listeners, who will in many cases know these songs hazily, the album is an excellent way into the genre, although the booklet, despite having notes in four languages, leaves the song texts untranslated. Channel Classics assists with fine sound from the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. – James Manheim

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Thomas Oliemans, Malcolm Martineau – Brahms: Romanzen aus Magelone & Regenlied-Zyklus (Brahms Songbook, Vol. 1) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Thomas Oliemans, Malcolm Martineau – Brahms: Romanzen aus Magelone & Regenlied-Zyklus (Brahms Songbook, Vol. 1) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:40 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records

Malcolm Martineau is the brilliant initiator of this new one-of-a-kind series on Linn. The Brahms Songbook has set the unprecedented goal to record Brahms’s lieder by complete opus number. For its first instalment, Martineau has teamed up with famed Dutch baritone Thomas Oliemans in the expansive Romanzen aus Magelone, Op. 33 . Composed between 1861 and 1869, the youthful, inevitably romantic fifteen-song cycle tells the story of a noble warrior, a Neapolitan princess and a sultan’s daughter. The operatic-like cycle goes through the emotions of each character as the tale unfolds. Oliemans’s busy stage career and ‘communicative singing style’ (The New York Times) make him the perfect fit. The album concludes with the virtually unknown ‘Regenlied’ cycle: four songs that were later included in Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 5 9. Volume 2 will see Dame Sarah Connolly and Hanno Müller-Brachmann share the bill.

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Thomas Oliemans, Paolo Giacometti – Schumann: Lieder – Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (2016) DSF DSD64

Thomas Oliemans, Paolo Giacometti – Schumann: Lieder – Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (2016)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82 MHz | Time – 32:04 minutes | 2,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Bookelt, Front Cover | © Challenge Records

Two souls, alas, reside within my breast’ Faust ascertained, and he was not the first to do so. From time immemorial we have quite some struggle with our inner contradictions, and we try to restrain them in many ways. Knowledge, alchemy, music, literature and drink are just some of the paths we follow in search of clarification and in the hope of gaining mastery of these troublemakers. Through the centuries all this has given rise to many literary and mythological couples: Apollo and Dionysus, Yin and Yang, but Florestan and Eusebius, Schumann’s literary and musical alter egos, are part of this tradition as well. The cautious, gentle Eusebius, as distinct from the more impulsive, high-spirited Florestan, prevail over both the musical and literary oeuvre of Schumann, as a line of approach, a disguise, and an attempt to get a grip on his inner turmoil.

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Vlaams Radiokoor, Jan Michiels, Inge Spinette, Lore Binon, Thomas Oliemans – Ein Menschliches Requiem (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Vlaams Radiokoor, Jan Michiels, Inge Spinette, Lore Binon, Thomas Oliemans - Ein Menschliches Requiem (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Vlaams Radiokoor, Jan Michiels, Inge Spinette, Lore Binon, Thomas Oliemans – Ein Menschliches Requiem (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:37 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Evil Penguin Classic

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