For this 2015 release from Toccata Classics, bass vocalist Jared Schwartz and pianist Roy Howat present twenty-five mélodies by Gabriel Fauré, mixing well-known songs with the less familiar. All are taken from the Edition Peters collection, edited by Howat, and the corrected versions will be of great interest to Fauré scholars and singers. But listeners will be most fascinated by the charming interpretations Schwartz brings to these settings of Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, and other French poets, because his rich voice ...
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For this 2015 release from Toccata Classics, bass vocalist Jared Schwartz and pianist Roy Howat present twenty-five mélodies by Gabriel Fauré, mixing well-known songs with the less familiar. All are taken from the Edition Peters collection, edited by Howat, and the corrected versions will be of great interest to Fauré scholars and singers. But listeners will be most fascinated by the charming interpretations Schwartz brings to these settings of Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, and other French poets, because his rich voice is flexible enough in the baritone register to bring out the songs' elegance and sweetness, while his lower tones are dark and seductive. Howat's restrained playing suits the subtlety of the music, though sometimes his accompaniment is just hard to hear in the mix. The recording has a narrow frequency range that makes it seem closed in and boxy, so finding a comfortable volume level can be tricky. Even so, this is a worthwhile recording for Fauré fans to hear and own. ~ Blair...
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