19 october 2023
The international release of the album ''L'Andalousie au cœur'' takes place on 23 October. An album celebrating the figure and music of Pauline García Viardot, featuring Spanish soprano Natalia Labourdette, Portuguese mezzo-soprano Helena Resurreiçao and Spanish pianist Francisco Soriano.
On 16 September, the album was presented for the first time at the inauguration of the recently restored Villa Viardot in Bougival, the beating heart of the future Centre Européen de Musique.
The recording and release of this album were made possible by the award in 2022 of one of the 'Leonardo' grants for researchers and cultural creators awarded to Francisco Soriano by the BBVA Foundation, in its 'Music and Opera, Performance' section. Funding from the grant has enabled the recording and publication of the album in the Odradek label catalogue, which will be launched on the international market in October.
Recitalists and opera artists Labourdette, Resurreiçao and Soriano are joining forces for this occasion to celebrate the figure and music of Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a fascinating composer and renowned singer who reigned supreme in 19th-century European cultural circles. A close friend of Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Clara Wieck, Schumann and Brahms, among others, Viardot was one of the pioneers of popular Spanish rhythms in 19th-century Paris. She introduced her boleros, habaneras, seguidillas and her father's works to her small circle of musician friends, giving rise to an influence of Hispanic and, fundamentally, Andalusian rhythms and sounds in French music that would inspire everything from Bizet's opera Carmen to Maurice Ravel and Debussy, right up to the end of the twentieth century.
L'Andalousie au cœur revisits Pauline Viardot's little-known repertoire: her songs in Spanish, the unpublished manuscripts of which are in the archives of Harvard University's Houghton Library. Following the recovery of her operetta Le Dernier Sorcier (the fruit of a collaboration between Francisco Soriano and Andrés Moreno, a musicologist), this previously unreleased recording makes it possible to rediscover an important part of Viardot's artistic output, essential for understanding and assessing the imprint of Hispanic elements in her work and its subsequent influence on nineteenth-century French music..
More information on Odradek Records website
19 october 2023
The international release of the album ''L'Andalousie au cœur'' takes place on 23 October. An album celebrating the figure and music of Pauline García Viardot, featuring Spanish soprano Natalia Labourdette, Portuguese mezzo-soprano Helena Resurreiçao and Spanish pianist Francisco Soriano.
On 16 September, the album was presented for the first time at the inauguration of the recently restored Villa Viardot in Bougival, the beating heart of the future Centre Européen de Musique.
The recording and release of this album were made possible by the award in 2022 of one of the 'Leonardo' grants for researchers and cultural creators awarded to Francisco Soriano by the BBVA Foundation, in its 'Music and Opera, Performance' section. Funding from the grant has enabled the recording and publication of the album in the Odradek label catalogue, which will be launched on the international market in October.
Recitalists and opera artists Labourdette, Resurreiçao and Soriano are joining forces for this occasion to celebrate the figure and music of Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a fascinating composer and renowned singer who reigned supreme in 19th-century European cultural circles. A close friend of Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Clara Wieck, Schumann and Brahms, among others, Viardot was one of the pioneers of popular Spanish rhythms in 19th-century Paris. She introduced her boleros, habaneras, seguidillas and her father's works to her small circle of musician friends, giving rise to an influence of Hispanic and, fundamentally, Andalusian rhythms and sounds in French music that would inspire everything from Bizet's opera Carmen to Maurice Ravel and Debussy, right up to the end of the twentieth century.
L'Andalousie au cœur revisits Pauline Viardot's little-known repertoire: her songs in Spanish, the unpublished manuscripts of which are in the archives of Harvard University's Houghton Library. Following the recovery of her operetta Le Dernier Sorcier (the fruit of a collaboration between Francisco Soriano and Andrés Moreno, a musicologist), this previously unreleased recording makes it possible to rediscover an important part of Viardot's artistic output, essential for understanding and assessing the imprint of Hispanic elements in her work and its subsequent influence on nineteenth-century French music..
More information on Odradek Records website
Playlist