Summer Night of Music... Love Songs

G :-

All Regions - Widescreen 16:9 - Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround / DTS 5.1 Surround / PCM Stereo - Colour - 148 Minutes - NTSC

"All You Need Is Love" - that was the simple wisdom proclaimed by the Beatles, and formulated by countless others before and after. Operatic aria, romantic Lied, cante flamenco, fado, jazz standard or pop: what would music be without the subject of Love? So the artists who foregathered on the historic market square in the heart of Leipzig to make music on a summer night had an inexhaustible store of love songs to choose from.

The great love stories of past centuries come to mind immediately: the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet, Carmen and the men who could not resist her. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko conjured up one of the greatest love stories of all time with three excerpts from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev's version of Shakespeare's play is a work of genius in its own right. Alike in the aggressive, dramatic power of "The Montagues and Capulets" and the sweeping "Morning Dance", the tragedy of the lovers caught between the millstones of two warring parties finds fitting musical expression.

The story of Romeo and Juliet is told again in Vincenzo Bellini's opera I Capuleti e I Montecchi and in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. In Bernstein's musical the conflict of the two familes is transferred to two street gangs in twentieth-century New York. The song "Somewhere" describes the hopeless longing of the lovers Tony and Maria to find a place for their love. There are no operas without love, from Giacomo Puccini's masterly comedy Gianni Schicchi to Alfredo Catalani's dramma musicale La Wally, about a young woman who runs away alone into the mountains of the Tirol in order to escape from the narrow conventions of her village. This is the story of a strong woman, and Catalani dressed it in spirited music. The Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs draws us into Wally's torments and moments of happiness.

But words are not always necessary, as the cellist Mischa Maisky demonstrates with his arrangement of a vocal number from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, turning Lensky's aria into a lyrical piece for cello and orchestra. Maisky, who was born in Riga, emigrated to Israel and now lives in Brussels, also presents his version of the "Swan" from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of Animals.
Roby Lakatos is another spellbinding instrumentalist, whose playing combines gipsy music, eastern European folk music, 1940s' swing, and classically trained virtuosity. In "As Time Goes By", he evokes the legendary scene from the film classic Casablanca, when the café owner Rick urges his pianist to "play it again, Sam". Just the opening bars of the melody are enough to remind him of his past happiness with Ilsa in Paris. But the melancholy it induces is soon swept aside when Lakatos tears into the title-song of the French spy-comedy Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire. This scion of a dynasty of gipsy fiddlers also goes back to his roots with two traditional gipsy melodies, "Two Guitars" and "Heyre Katy".

The jazz diva Dee-Dee Bridgewater celebrates the perennial vigour of American standards. In Leipzig she sings of love in many guises, from the tender "Speak Low", one of Kurt Weill's most successful numbers, to the oldstyle romanticism of an Ella Fitzgerald hit, "Stairway to the Stars". Her thrilling version of "Love for Sale" is undoubtedly one of the high points of this summer night's music. Cole Porter wrote the song for a character in one of his shows, a prostitute - reason enough for it to be banned from American radio for decades. But the great women jazz singers were less prudish and made "Love for Sale" one of the most popular vocal standards of all time.

There is a strange unanimity between fado from Portugal, flamenco from Spain and tango from Argentina in the dread of the end that seems to be present in all of them from the moment they start to play. Misia is a past-mistress of this melancholy. There is a spellbinding sadness in her voice. The unsettling songs she sings meld with her mysterious personality to complete a work of art. It makes no difference whether she sings of the yearning for one of her beloved's tears ("Lágrima"), of the two moons that follow her ("Duas Luas") or of Love itself ("Garras dos Sentidos"): in every one she discovers anew the "fado" inseparable from the Portuguese sense of existence.

Mayte Martín accomplishes something very similar. This cantoara flamenca is one of the most interesting musicians on the recent flamenco scene. She taught herself cante flamenca, retaining the freedom to let her voice develop in a way that has preserved its individuality. She has been the preferred partner of the flamenco dancer Belén Maya in performance since 1997.

Brooding sadness also stamps the music of the Argentinian Rodolfo Mederos. One of the best players of the bandoneon in our time, Mederos constantly renews the tango nuevo. His interpretations of Carlos Gardel's classic "El día que me quieras" and the two wellknown tangos by Astor Piazzolla, "Milonga del Ángel" and "Adiós Nonino", are marked by their impressive seriousness and passion.

The King's Singers take an altogether more lighthearted view of love. They bring the laconic humour of six cheerful English gentlemen to their mocking treatment of the popular song "Chitarra d'amor". Their version of "Honey Pie", the second Beatles classic of the evening, has a twinkle in its eye and should also not be taken too seriously: something to make us smile after all the flights of passion, the bewilderment and tears love brings. And in the grand finale the refrain returns briefly and pointedly: "All You Need Is Love".
-Frank Gerdes

Dee Dee Bridgewater - vocals
Mischa Maisky - cello
Roby Lakatos - gipsy violinist and his ensemble
The King's Singers
Mísia - fado
Cristina Gallardo-Domâs - soprano
Mayte Martín & Belén Maya - flamenco
Rodolfo Mederos - bandoneón
Gilles Apap - violin
Björn Casapietra - vocals

Recorded on the picturesque Historical Market Square in Leipzig.

Includes conversations with the artists about the meaning of love.

Brand new recording - state-of-the-art quality.

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Andrey Boreyko - conductor