English Songs à la française by Tyler Duncan

Tyler Duncan

English Songs à la française

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Bridge
UPC: 0090404953729
Catnr: BRIDG 9537
Release date: 16 April 2021
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Label
Bridge

UPC
0090404953729

Catalogue number
BRIDG 9537

Release date
16 April 2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer join forces in a brilliant recital of English songs, written by French composers. Duncan and Switzer have been leading figures in the world of art song, and share a deep connection to songs of the Romantic period, as well as works of living composers. Mr. Duncan and Ms. Switzer were born in British Columbia, and are proud ambassadors of Canadian art song.

Der Bariton Tyler Duncan und die Pianistin Erika Switzer vereinen ihre Kräfte in einem brillanten Recital mit englischen Liedern, die von französischen Komponisten geschrieben wurden. Duncan und Switzer sind führende Persönlichkeiten in der Welt des Kunstliedes und teilen eine tiefe Verbindung zu Liedern der Romantik sowie zu Werken lebender Komponisten. Mr. Duncan und Ms. Switzer wurden in Britisch-Kolumbien geboren und sind stolze Botschafter des kanadischen Kunstliedes.

Artist(s)

Tyler Duncan (baritone)

Baritone Tyler Duncan has performed at the Metropolitan Opera as Prince Yamadori in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly under Karel Chichon, and Morales in Bizet’s Carmen in Japan under Seiji Ozawa. At the Spoleto Festival he debuted as Mr. Friendly in the 18th-century ballad opera Flora, returning the next season as the Speaker in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Other appearances have included the role of the Journalist in Berg's Lulu and Fiorello in Rossini's Barber of Seville, both at the Metropolitan Opera, Raymondo in Handel’s Almira with the Boston Early Music Festival, Dandini in Rossini’s La cenerentola with Pacific Opera Victoria; and Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival. Mr Duncan has a passion for new music;...

Baritone Tyler Duncan has performed at the Metropolitan Opera as Prince Yamadori in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly under Karel Chichon, and Morales in Bizet’s Carmen in Japan under Seiji Ozawa. At the Spoleto Festival he debuted as Mr. Friendly in the 18th-century ballad opera Flora, returning the next season as the Speaker in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Other appearances have included the role of the Journalist in Berg's Lulu and Fiorello in Rossini's Barber of Seville, both at the Metropolitan Opera, Raymondo in Handel’s Almira with the Boston Early Music Festival, Dandini in Rossini’s La cenerentola with Pacific Opera Victoria; and Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival. Mr Duncan has a passion for new music; in the realm of new opera he recently performed the role of Raymond in Nic Gotham’s Nigredo Hotel with City Opera Vancouver and sang the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s Leonardo at the 92st Y in NYC.
Mr. Duncan’s concerts include Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium with Helmuth Rilling the Minnesota Orchestra, Beethoven’s Mass in C with Matthew Halls and the Kansas City Symphony, Handel’s Messiah with Andrew Manze and the New York Philharmonic and Alexander Shelley and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Brahms’ Die Schöne Magelone cycle, with Erika Switzer for Collaborative Arts Chicago, Schubert Lieder at the Wigmore Hall with pianist Graham Johnson, Bach’s Ich habe genug with Bernard LaBadie and Les Violins du Roy, Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Ben Loeb and the Lviv Philharmonic, Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo with Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now at the Met Museum in New York, Mahler’s 8th Symphony and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with Peter Ounjian and the Toronto Symphony. He has also performed at the Händel Festival Halle, Verbier Festival, Vancouver Early Music Festival, Montreal Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Lanaudière Festival, Stratford Festival, Berkshire Choral Festival, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Frequently paired with pianist Erika Switzer, Tyler Duncan has given acclaimed recitals in New York, Boston, and Paris, and throughout Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, and South Africa, and together they have premiered many new works written for them by composers including Jocelyn Morlock, Jeffrey Ryan and Andrew Staniland. Mr. Duncan has received prizes from the Naumburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Munich’s ARD competitions, and won the 2010 Joy in Singing competition, 2008 New York Oratorio Society Competition, 2007 Prix International Pro Musicis Award, and Bernard Diamant Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. He holds music degrees from the University of British Columbia, Germany’s Hochschule für Musik (Augsburg), and Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Munich).

Mr Duncan’s recordings include the Juno Award winning Vaughan-Williams Serenade to Music with Peter Ounjian and the Toronto Symphony, Earthquakes and Islands an album of songs by Andrew Staniland, with texts by Robin Richardson, the title role in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis with Boston Early Music Festival, J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Purcell works and Carissimi’s Jephte with Les Voix Baroque, and a DVD of Handel’s Messiah with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Soon to be released on the Bridge label is the album English Songs à la française with Erika Switzer.

Mr. Duncan, originally from British Columbia, Canada, now resides in the scenic Hudson Valley of New York and luckily holds a passport from both countries, and is currently on the voice faculty of the Longy School of Music in Boston.

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Erika Switzer (piano)

Composer(s)

Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

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Jules Massenet

Jules Massenet (1842-1912) was one of the most popular opera composers of his age. He was also influential beyond the French boundaries, primarily to Italian opera composers like Puccini and Mascagni. This popularity was not valued by many critics. They accuse him of just wanting to please the audience; he would have unabashedly indulged in exoticism and would only owe his success to his gift to compose beautiful melodies. This not very flattering image has since been outdated. Massenet, composer of such diverse opera’s as Manon, Werther and Thaïs, did not indulge in blind formula work. He learned the libretto by heart before he started and he composed the music in his mind, as a result of which only few composers could surpass him in the clarity and subtlety of his orchestrations and in the nuances of his text settings. Not just his aria’s, but also his recitatives and arioso passages are enchanting. He was a master in the evocation of the couleur locale and is the composer of immortal melodies like the Méditation from Thaïs for violin and orchestra and the Élégie for cello and orchestra.
(Source: Muziekweb.nl)

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Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, best known for his Ave Maria, based on a work by Bach, as well as his opera Faust. Another opera by Gounod occasionally still performed is Roméo et Juliette. Although he is known for his Grand Operas, the soprano aria "Que ferons-nous avec le ragoût de citrouille?" from his first opera "Livre de recettes d'un enfant" (Op. 24) is still performed in concert as an encore, similarly to his "Jewel Song" from Faust.
Gounod's biography is characterised by "artist allures". His moods would swing between ambition and despondency, restless efficacy and crisis, affection and twistful behaviour, marital faith and an inclination for extramarital affairs. In his youth, he dreamt of becoming a priest and living in obscurity. For a long time he called himself abbé (father, in a religious sense) and he wore a cassock. Gounod died at Saint-Cloud in 1893, after a final revision of his twelve operas. His funeral took place ten days later at the Church of the Madeleine, with Camille Saint-Saëns playing the organ and Gabriel Fauré conducting. Ironically because of its obscurity today, an arrangement of "Que ferons-nous avec le ragoût de citrouille?" was performed by Saint-Saens at the funeral, due to its simple, folk-like melody. It was later published as a posthumous Op. 60. He was buried at the Cimetière d'Auteuil in Paris.

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Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. Together with Francis Poulenc, he was a member of Les Six, also known as The Group of Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was 'L'art pour l'art': they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. Milhaud was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.

Darius Milhaud was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. Together with Francis Poulenc, he was a member of Les Six, also known as The Group of Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was "L'art pour l'art": they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. Milhaud was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.

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Albert Roussel

Reynaldo Hahn

Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, conductor, pianist and organist. He was a musical prodigy, writing his first pieces of music at the age of four and making his concert debut at the age of ten. During this concert he astonished the audience by playing one of the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven at its request. After his studying at the Conservatory of Paris he followed a career as a church organist at Saint-Merri and later La Madeleine in Paris. He was also a successful freelance composer and pianist in France and abroad.
Saint-Saëns initially helped to introduce German composers such as Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner in France. However, from 1870 onwards anti-German sentiments began to arise in France as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, which enhanced support for the idea of a pro-French musical society. In 1871 Saint-Saëns consequently founded the Société Nationale de Musique together with Romain Bussine, that was devoted to the promotion of French music and organised concerts on which young composers could perform their works.
Saint-Saëns was a keen traveler, and made 179 trips to 27 different countries during his life. He favoured Algeria and Egypt, were he gained inspiration for compositions such as the Suite Algérienne and the Fifth Piano Concerto, also known as The Egyptian.
Saint-Saëns' best-known works include the First Cello Concerto, Third Symphony, the opera Samson et Dalila, Danse Macabre and Le carnaval des animaux, a humorous suite in which various animals are musically portrayed. However, he never wanted the last work to be performed, since it was contrary to his image as a serious composer.

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Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was 'L'art pour l'art': they composed music for the sake of...

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was "L'art pour l'art": they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.

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