Hey, that’s the way to say goodnight
mainFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Musical lullabies can quickly outlast their welcome. Everybody’s had the Brahms Wiegenlied sung to them at some point in infancy and many have experienced the sleepytime duet in Hansel and Gretel, the one they sing just before the witch becomes their nightmare. But one hearing is usually all I can bear of these bonbons.
The beauty of this compilation…
Read on here.
And here.
In The Critic.
In Czech.
In Spanish.
More languages to follow.
One to watch out for? I think M Chamayou has already been spotted. Young? He’s 40 in March. Recorded the complete Ravel piano music for Warners in 2015, to considerable acclaim. Won the Gramophone Disc of the Year in 2019 for Saint-Saens 2nd and 5th Piano Concertos. London debut at Wigmore Hall in 2010 ……
‘Everybody’s had the Brahms Wiegenlied sung to them at some point in infancy’-yeah, I bet it’s a nightly occurrence on the council estates of Rotherham.
Yes, pretty well what I thought. I loved my mother but could not even pretend that she might have.
I had no idea that anyone sang the Brahms Lullaby to me when I was in infancy. But if Norman says it was sung to everybody at some point, I must accept that someone sang it to me, even if they too cannot remember. I have at some point heard the Hansel and Gretel duet, and perhaps even listened to it. But I cannot say I have ever experienced it.
This is a nice selection of pieces. By the way the Alkan title comes from Song of Songs 5:2. It don’t think that it is coincidental that for essentially the whole piece, each bar consists of two groups of five chords.