Shéhérazade is a 40-minute studio album of art songs by Maurice Ravel performed by Frederica von Stade. In the Chansons madécasses, she is accompanied by the flautist Doriot Anthony Dwyer, the cellist Jules Eskin and the pianist Martin Katz. In two of the Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, the Deux mélodies hébraïques and Shéhérazade itself, she is accompanied by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. The album was released in 1981.
Contents
Recording
The album was recorded digitally in Symphony Hall, Boston on 8 October 1979 (tracks 1–3) and on 8 April 1980 (tracks 4–7), and in the CBS 30th Street Studio, New York City on 10 November 1979 (tracks 8–10). It was recorded and edited with a Sony system, and mastered with CBS's DisComputer system. The recording of Shéhérazade followed live performances of the cycle that von Stade, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Ozawa gave in Symphony Hall on 4, 5 and 6 October 1979.
Cover art
The cover of the album was designed by Christopher Austopchuk under the art direction of Henrietta Condak, and features a photograph of von Stade taken by Valérie Clément.
Critical reception
Reviews
Alan Blyth reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in July 1981, comparing von Stade's performance of Chansons madécasses with a version sung by Janet Baker, and comparing her performance of Shéhérazade with versions sung by Baker, Régine Crespin and Jessye Norman.
Shéhérazade, he wrote, was usually sung by a soprano, but, like Baker before her, Frederica von Stade had demonstrated that the cycle could be successfully performed by a mezzo-soprano too. The only point at which the work's tessitura had challenged her was the climax of "Asie", where her tone had blanched at Ravel's taxing high B flat.
Technically, her reading was notable for her prodigious breath control, which allowed her to eschew the breaks of phrase perpetrated by some of her predecessors. Her diction, moreover, was now better than it had been on some of her earlier recordings. Interpretatively, her performance "catches to perfection the languorous, sultry feeling" of both Ravel's music and Tristan Klingsor's poetry.
Conducting, Seiji Ozawa was wise in his choice of tempos, avoiding the "stodgy" pacing that had to some extent compromised Norman's performance of the cycle under Sir Colin Davis.Indeed, in "L'indifférent", Ozawa outpaced not just Davis but also Crespin's Ernest Ansermet, but without detracting from the "lazy seductiveness of this glorious song". Crespin's LP had stood at the pinnacle of the Shéhérazade discography for many years, but von Stade's was close to supplanting it.
Baker's, Crespin's and Norman's discs of the cycle had all coupled it with Hector Berlioz's Les nuits d'été. Von Stade had followed an arguably more intelligent path and programmed other music by Ravel instead. She sang his Greek folk melodies with a happy insouciance and his Hebrew songs with an appropriate focused intensity, but her outstanding performances in her filler items were in the Chansons madécasses, "which still have the power to shock even fifty-five years after they were written". Her readings were remarkable for their "accomplishment in mood-painting and word definition". Baker had sung these evocations of Madagascar sensuously, but von Stade had marginally surpassed her, with "a timbre just a little better suited to their earthy voluptuousness".
The playing of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was first class. "Altogether this is a well compiled, imaginatively executed digital disc of some music that should be in every respectable collection".
Accolade
The album was nominated for a Grammy award for the best classical solo vocal performance of 1981.
CD track listing
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Shéhérazade (1903), with texts by Tristan Klingsor (1874–1966)
1 (9:29) "Asie"
2 (2:57) "La flûte enchantée"
3 (3:37) "L'indifférent"
Cinq mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906), with traditional texts translated by Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (1877–1944)
4 (1:40) No. 1: "Chanson de la mariée"
5 (0:58) No. 5: "Tout gai!"
Deux mélodies hébraïques (1914), with traditional texts
6 (4:38) "Kaddisch"
7 (1:46) "L'énigme éternelle"
Chansons madécasses (1925–1926), with texts by Évariste Desiré de Forges, vicomte de Parny (1753–1814)
8 (5:51) "Nahandove, ô belle Nahandove"
9 (4:43) "Aoua! Méfiez-vous des blancs"
10 (4:16) "Il est doux de se coucher"
Personnel
Musical
Frederica von Stade (b. 1945), mezzo-soprano
Boston Symphony Orchestra, (tracks 1–7)
Seiji Ozawa (b. 1935), conductor (tracks 1–7)
Doriot Anthony Dwyer (b. 1922), flute (tracks 8–10)
Jules Eskin (1931–2016), cello (tracks 8–10)
Martin Katz (b. 1944), piano (tracks 8–10)
Other
Paul Walter Myers (1932–2015), producer
Budd Graham, engineer
Martin Greenblatt, engineer
Milton Cherin, engineer
Release history
In February 1981, Columbia released the album on LP (catalogue numbers M-36665 in Britain, IM-36665 in the US), with sleeve notes by Arbie Orenstein, Alain Feron (in French) and Uwe Kraemer (in German), and an insert with texts and translations. The album was also issued on cassette (catalogue numbers 40-36665 in Britain, HMT-36665 in the US).
Although excerpts from the album were made available on compilation CDs, it was not released in its entirety on CD until 2016, when it appeared (in a miniature replica of its original LP sleeve) with a 52-page booklet in Sony's 18-CD collection Frederica von Stade: The Complete Columbia Recital Albums (catalogue number 88875183412).
Sequel
The album was followed by a second album of French art songs performed by von Stade, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa: Nuits d'été & La damoiselle élue, a 1984 release featuring works by Hector Berlioz and Claude Debussy.