Les Blasphèmes, Mélodies Fin-de-siècle

Description

Outhere Music is proud to announce the release of a new album on the Fuga Libera label in collaboration with La Chapelle Musicale, featuring contralto Sarah Laulan in a series of Franco-Belgian melodies, accompanied on piano by the prestigious Maciej Pikulski, with the exceptional participation of the Quatuor Hermès. Gathered around Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, these twilight and galvanizing melodies present an unknown aspect of Mélodie française. Through sometimes very intimate texts by writers such as Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Verhaeren, a series of atypical, rarely recorded pieces are paralleled, including 4 unpublished works composed by Chaminade, Podlowsky, and D’Indy. These works spoke, already a century ago, of the existential anxieties of the new man in the face of the "World of Progress." A winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Competition and the Geneva International Competition, Sarah Laulan brings her rare contralto timbre to the ambivalence of these pieces, which are alternately provocative and introspective. Supported by a rich booklet and illustrations by Rops, the album Les Blasphèmes evokes with delight and emotion this period of artistic assertion, which remains highly relevant today.