Faure / Smith / Nelleke Mirages CD

It is truly in his songs that Faure reveals the flower of his genius, wrote the composer's former pupil Maurice Ravel. More than a hundred songs written over six decades made Faure perhaps the greatest master of the genre French "melodie." The present collection takes us on a journey from Faure's first song cycle, "Poeme d'un jour" to his last, "L'Horizon chimerique," via the exultant "La Bonne Chanson" and the intensely concentrated "Mirages." The songs have texts by French poets of Faure's time; here we find poems of Charles Grandmougin, Baronne de Brimont, Paul Verlaine and Jean de La Ville de Mirmont. "Mirages" concludes Bettina Smith's project for LAWO Classics of recording all of Gabriel Faure's cycles for voice and piano. It was preceded in this series by Fetes Galantes and "Serres Chaudes," both together with pianist Einar Rottingen. Together they have also released "Voices of Women" with songs of Fartein Valen, Jostein Stalheim and Ketil Hvoslef, composers from Norway's west coast.