Special offer. Mozart: Desperate Heroines
Sandrine Piau (soprano)
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Ivor Bolton
Piau recreates numb torment, fear and anger within the comparatively small expressive range of her soprano...And Ivor Bolton's urging of the orchestral slings and arrows is everywhere minutely...
Special offer. Mozart: Desperate Heroines
Sandrine Piau (soprano)
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Ivor Bolton
Purchase product
Piau recreates numb torment, fear and anger within the comparatively small expressive range of her soprano...And Ivor Bolton's urging of the orchestral slings and arrows is everywhere minutely...
About
"When Naïve offered me the chance to record a Mozart recital in 2001, it was something I hadn’t even dared to dream of, because he seemed to me to be the composer most emblematic of every kind of perfection. I made the disc with a feeling almost of transgression and a tremendous fear of not being worthy of him. Now, thirteen years later, I come back to Mozart with the experience of the roles I’ve tackled on stage in the meantime.
Donna Anna is probably the character I most wanted to include, not only because I’ve sung her in the theatre but also because the part is traditionally given to heavier voices than mine. Like any so-called ‘Baroque’ singer, I’m suspicious of traditions, and I like the idea that behind her cries of suffering she has still retained a redemptive gentleness, which one can sense in ‘Non mi dir’. The arias I’ve chosen are often tormented. I suppose this is a disc of maturity, which both reflects my trajectory over these past few years and catches me at a specific moment in my life, like a snapshot." Sandrine Piau
Contents and tracklist
Spotlight on this release
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Sandrine Piau - Desperate Heroines
1st Oct 2014
Katherine talks to the French soprano about her new disc of Mozart arias, out yesterday on Naive.
Awards and reviews
January 2015
Piau recreates numb torment, fear and anger within the comparatively small expressive range of her soprano...And Ivor Bolton's urging of the orchestral slings and arrows is everywhere minutely attuned to the elusive and delicate, nervous volatility Piau expresses so well.
December 2014
Piau brings each of these women, amorous, vulnerable and/or tormented, to vivid life. Her tender shaping of 'Non mi dir' convinces you that Donna Anna does indeed love Don Ottavio...Elsewhere she finds an extra sensuous warmth in her tone for Susanna's aria, and a darker intensity for Aspasia's Gluckian ombra scena, and Sandrina's 'mad scene'.
December 2014
the upper notes sparkle and her intonation is impeccable throughout, as is her secure feeling for Mozartian style...her hushed mezza voce is heart-stoppingly beautiful and throughout she never sings too loud: this is an artist who knows how to invest a phrase with the greatest expressiveness and shape without forcing her tone or distorting the vocal line...a delight.
January 2015
Piau’s refined, well characterised singing is consistently delightful, and she is superbly accompanied by the historically informed playing of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra under Ivor Bolton’s sensitive and idiomatic direction.
28th September 2014
Only a tightening of tone in Anna’s cabaletta betrays effort; virtuoso numbers from Mitridate and Lucia Silla are brilliantly dispatched.
18th September 2014
Piau may be just too knowing to convince as Barbarina, but she’s a thrilling Anna, and wonderfully stylish in the extracts from the early opera serias, Mitridate and Lucio Silla. She’s a very fine, intelligent artist, and Ivor Bolton and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra accompany her most sympathetically.
Classical Music
her ‘Non mi dir’ makes one long to hear her Donna Anna on stage. With warm, idiomatic playing from this crack Salzburg band, the disc is highly recommended.
