Jeff Cohen

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.

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