Philippe Sly Featured; Sidney Outlaw Carnegie Hall Announcement
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| Philippe Sly |
Philippe Sly was recently featured in La Scena Musicale as one of opera's major new talents.
With his superb voice,
leading man good looks and astounding charisma, bass-baritone Philippe
Sly has rapidly seduced a considerable part of his Montreal
International Musical Competition audience. Yet it still came as a
surprise when the young singer walked away with almost all of the
prizes.
This last year has been
very fruitful for the 23-year-old artist. He was one of the 2011 winners
of the famed Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions,
Radio-Canada’s 2012-2013 “Révélations” in the classical music category,
and the Radios francophones publiques’ Young Soloist prize winner. For
the MIMC, Sly picked different styles of works and sang them with
restraint, hoping that his personality would shine through. He even
closed his performance on a meditative note with an excerpt from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. [Continued HERE]
Philippe Sly will record his first album in September with pianist Michael McMahon for Analekta Records. Among the pieces will be Dichterliebe; Quatre Poèmes d’après l’Intermezzo d’Heinrich Heine by French composer Guy Ropartz, based on the same Lyrisches Intermezzo by Heine that inspired Schumann; Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and Three Tennyson Songs, composed for Sly by his friend, the English composer Jonathan Dove. A second CD, of Rameau’s Cantatas with soprano Hélène Guilmette, harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour and a small ensemble will follow the version performed in concert on September 30 at Bourgie Hall.
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| Sydney Outlaw |
Sydney Outlaw, another amazing young talent and fellow participant in San Francisco's Merola Opera Program, recently announced that he'll be performing at Carnegie Hall on January 17th. The gifted recitalist will perform lieder by Richard Strauss, Vaughn Williams' "The House of Life" and some Cole Porter and George Gershwin songs.
We've had the great fortune of hearing Outlaw in recital and we highly recommend this concert. Click HERE for tickets and additional concert information.
In a word, Miraculous!
ReplyDeleteThough the CD of these MP3 selections won't be released until October, it is well worth the investment to purchase each one of these songs for you pleasure right now. This is the formal recorded introduction of an astonishingly gifted new baritone from Canada who is only 23 years old and has the vocal and intuitive maturity of one much more experienced in years and in performance an din the discoveries of life. He won the Metropolitan National Council Audition in 2011 and since that time (and even before that time) he has proven to have a golden voice, striking handsome gook looks of a movie star, a stage manner in difficult roles that proves his acting skills, and a personality that is warm, ingratiating, and communicative with the audience both while singing and while accepting the thunderous applause. He is most assuredly a star in the ascent.
The collection of songs here and on the upcoming CD are gathered under the title `In Dreams/En rêves/In Träume' and with his collaborator Michael McMahon at the piano the recital is as follows;
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Dichterliebe, Op. 48
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Guy Ropartz (1864-1955)
Poèmes d'après l'intermezzo d'Heinrich Heine
Jonathan Dove (1959 - )
Three Tennyson Songs in a World Premiere Recording.
Sly's affinity for the Schumann 'Dichterliebe' is evident in the manner in which he approaches the varying moods of each of the sixteen songs: as the poet he portrays the varying emotions of each of these moods with conviction, graceful tone, and exceptional attention to the poetry of the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine. His German diction is perfect. Being French -Canadian it seems natural for Sly to make the difficult `Don Quichotte à Dulcinée' songs of Ravel his own - a fact that he clearly does with the first few bars. TO hear him change so comfortably between languages and periods is a sign of a very intelligent well-trained singer.
The music of French composer Guy Ropartz is less well known, at least in this country, but his `Poèmes d'après l'intermezzo d'Heinrich Heine' dating back to 1899 make a strong statement for his importance the way that Sly brings them to life. The final works are three songs by the prolific British composer Jonathan Dove, best known for his several operas. These Tennyson Songs are definitely in the contemporary mode but they are accessible and bear hearing frequently. Here Sly again marries his vocal finesse with the English lyrics with the pure beauty of sound from his rich baritone resources. This is a collection or sampling of music from the mid 1800s to the present day and Philippe Sly, graced with the superb pianism of Michael McMahon, makes a case for the standard of performance of lieder reached by only a few.
Grady Harp