Soile Isokoski - Soile Isokoski sings Chausson, Berlioz & Duparc (2015)

Soprano Soile Isokoski is singing orchestral songs by three different French composers in her new recording. The recording includes two major works in the French song repertoire Ernest Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer and Hector Berlioz's Nuits d'été. The disc ends with three finely-crafted miniature songs by Henri Duparc, which are no less of artistic value.

Soile Isokoski is recognized as one of the world's finest lyric sopranos and regularly appears on the most renowned stages. Isokoski made her début at the Finnish National Opera as Mimi in Puccini's La Bohème and has since delighted audiences and critics alike at opera houses in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, London, Milan, Paris, and New York, and at the festivals of Salzburg, Savonlinna, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Edinburgh, and Orange. Soile Isokoski has worked with numerous distinguished conductors. Isokoski has an extensive concert repertoire, and she regularly gives recitals in the most renowned stages.

In this recording Soile Isokoski is accompanied by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra together with its celebrated Chief Conductor John Storgårds. Soile Isokoski has a wide catalogue of recording for Ondine. Isokoski's award-winning recordings for Ondine include Sibelius's Luonnotar and other orchestral songs by Jean Sibelius, with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under Leif Segerstam (2007 BBC Music Magazine Award 'Disc of the Year' and MIDEM Classical Award), and Four Last Songs and other orchestral songs by Richard Strauss, with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Marek Janowski (2002 Gramophone Award).

Soprano Soile Isokoski provides, as ever, a masterclass in smooth line and radiant tone in this disc of French music. Ernest Chausson's Poème de l Amour et de la Mer was completed a decade or so after Wagner's death and a decade or so before Debussy's La Mer, and it sounds that way, though it s less fluid harmonically than either of those composers would have allowed. Isokoski's singing has an inwardness that here could be mistaken for coolness, but it s a performance that takes us into her confidence, and at the big moments she soars with the orchestra, even if one might ideally wish for a more voluptuously Wagnerian voice. John Storgårds and the Helsinki Philharmonic sound a little restrained here, but less so in Berlioz's Nuits d' Été, in which they stretch and flex with Isokoski, again a poised, refined soloist. Three Duparc songs round things off, with orchestra and singer cresting the waves especially gleamingly in L'invitation au Voyage.**** -- Guardian, 20/8/15

Soilie Isokoski and John Storgards take on two French Orchestral song-cycles often linked by their Romantic, sensous exoticism, adding some Duparc songs in a very similar vein. Actually, though, they're quite different in style. The Berlioz is more varied, a series of songs mirroring the moods of Theophile Gautier's verse, and it repays a lieder style sense of detail in both word and expression. This Isokoski certainly has, and it's the more successful performance of the two. Performance *** Recording *** -- BBC Music Magazine, Nov'15