Sandrine Piau, David Kadouch - Voyage Intime (2022) CD-Rip

No one can accuse soprano Sandrine Piau of ever resting on her laurels, and with this 2023 release, she began, in her late fifties, a new partnership with accompanist David Kadouch. It is a bit hard to tell what the theme is supposed to be all about. Only some of the songs are "intimes," and many are not about voyages; Piau also notes that some of the songs are about "the theme of people being snatched away from the land of the living," not an especially intimate concept. Best just to listen and take the songs one by one, and this will reveal not only strong performances but organizational principles the performers don't mention. The first part of the program is devoted to German lieder, the second to French mélodies (before a final return to Schubert), with one piano piece in each set. Piau is arguably the greatest French interpreter of German song, and her Schubert Erlkönig, D. 328, has nothing trite about it as she inhabits but doesn't make opera characters out of the three characters in the piece. Another "theme" is that Piau really makes songs by women her own. There is a group by Clara Schumann, with an excellent setting of Heine's Lorelei that owes something to Erlkönig but is in no way a knockoff, and a fine group by Lili Boulanger that fits Piau beautifully. Sample Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre rêve. Perhaps the Mignon songs do not fit her quite so well at this late date, but the heftier numbers by Liszt and Wolf more than make up for this. Yet another theme is that these are all songs that give the pianist a great deal to do, and Piau's interactions with Kadouch are sensitive and detailed enough to make one eagerly anticipate future collaborations. Superbly recorded by Alpha at the Teldex Studio in Berlin, the album made classical best-seller charts in early 2023.