 La voix occupa une place centrale dans l’œuvre de Malipiero, par ses opéras d’abord, mais aussi par un important ensemble de mélodies, la plupart écrites pour soprano. Les voici assemblées par un duo dédié à ces œuvres très rarement enregistrées et de toute façon de manière éparse. Malipiero avait dans l’oreille des sopranos italiennes d’alors, mais également à compter des années quarante la voix mozartienne de Magda Lazlo. Le soprano fluté, un peu mince et pincée de Paula Camponovo n’en ressuscite guère le grain si spécifique, mais il faut lui rendre hommage d’avoir risqué l’entreprise. Elle est d’ailleurs, une fois l’affaire du timbre acceptée, une interprète scrupuleuse toujours, et souvent inspirée comme dans les fabuleux I sonetti delle fate d’après d’Annunzio (l’ultime « Oriana-Oriana infedele » est un des chefs d’œuvre parmi les mélodies), ou encore Le Stagione italiche, les Tre canti dii Filomela. Malipiero, au long de cette lagune de mélodie, fait son miel des influences qui tissent son langage savant, Debussy, le grégorien, Respighi, les madrigalistes vénitiens ou ferrarais, les mélodies populaires, tout cela au service d’un art lettré qui s’inspire d’abord de poèmes savamment choisis, y compris parmi les siens. Accompagnateur attentif, d’autant que Malipiero écrit des parties de pianos qui concourent grandement à la magie de bien des mélodies, Alfredo Blessano, sait inspirer sa soprano et lui faire excéder ses limites avec art. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé) Belonging to the generation of Respighi but dying several decades later, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) is a far more varied composer than listeners to his post-Romantic chamber and orchestral music would guess. This album is both the most comprehensive publication ever issued of his song output on record, and a valuable opportunity to reappraise an often under-rated 20th-century composer. Malipiero wrote songs throughout his career, and in his late 20s found an affinity with the visionary and influential poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. Their artistic partnership began in 1909 with I sonetti delle fate, full of Wagnerian yearning in the spirit of Debussy’s incidental music to d’Annunzio’s St Sebastian play. The composer’s literary leanings and gifted word setting soon produced equally idiomatic settings of French poetry in a set of Cinq mélodies and an elliptical cycle of three poems (titled in English) by Georges Jean-Aubry, Keepsake. With Le stagioni italiche, however, Malipiero shows himself up to date and in sympathy with the latest developments in expressionist song writing from the pens of Mahler, Schoenberg and Webern, and with an ambition to match: a 40-minute cycle of four varied texts ranging from the 15th century to Malipiero’s own day. Like much else here, the cycle has previously been recorded but never in the context of Malipiero’s other songs which help us to understand the composer’s stylistic evolution. Three years later, there followed a through-composed drama based on the ancient legend of Philomel (immortalised by Ovid in the Metamorphoses) from which Malipiero extracted a cycle of three songs. He continued to refresh his style and innovate with Le sette allegrezze d’amore from 1945, but little in his music prepares the listener for the pointilliste precision of the Sette canzonette veneziane from 1960. Anyone with a passion for art song will want to acquaint themselves with this marvellously varied body of work, especially in the hands of the ‘Vansìsiem Lied Duo’, consisting of soprano Paola Camponovo and pianist Alfredo Blessano. Previous albums have shown them to be acutely sensitive interpreters of Rossini, Debussy and Lili Boulanger, and the French-Italian axis of Malipiero’s songs plays to their particular talents.
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