Légendes Fantastiques Hugues Borsarello & Samuel Parent

• Edvard Grieg (1843 - 1907):
• 1 Lyric Pieces, Op.71: III. Puck 01:47
• Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787):
• 2 Orfeo ed Euridice: Melodie d'Orphée (extract) 03:24
• Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847):
• 3 12 Gesänge, Op. 8: VIII. Hexenlied 02:12
• Hugo Wolf (1860 - 1903):
• 4 Eichendorff-lieder: VIII. Nachtzauber 04:07
• Antonio Bazzini (1818 - 1897):
• 5 La ronde des lutins, Op. 25 05:15
• Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918):
• 6 Préludes, Livre I, L.117: VIII. La fille aux cheveux de lin 02:41
• Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921):
• 7 Danse macabre, Op. 40 06:57
• de Falla Manuel (1876 - 1946):
• 8 El Amor brujo: XIII. Danse du feu 04:03
• Ernest Chausson (1855 - 1899):
• 9 2 Mélodies, Op. 36: II. Dans la forët du charme et de l'enchantement 04:02
• Henri Duparc (1848 - 1933):
• 10 Phidylé 05:07
• Henryk Wieniawski (1835 - 1880):
• 11 Legende, Op. 17 07:19
• Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886):
• 12 Lorelei, S.273 06:56
• Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 - 1957):
• 13 Caprice fantastique 03:57
• Jules Massenet (1842 - 1912):
• 14 Thaïs, Acte II: Meditation 05:17
• Total Runtime 01:03:04

Info for Légendes Fantastiques

He was born Antonello Faribaldi, but the man better known as Hugues Borsarello, was born on March 9, 1664 in Cremona, Lombardy, the capital of the province of the same name, in the plains region of Pô in northern Italy. His father, Giacomo Faribaldi, was a modest shoemaker – at a time when one was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father’s profession – who suffered, since from the age of thirty, from a deformation of the spine caused by the endless days of back bended toil. His mother, a laundress by day and a seamstress by night, was forced to recruit the assistance of her son to work in the wash houses of the city outskirts, barely ekeing out a living for the family despite their combined efforts.

Antonello (Hugues), as a child, met Francesco Ruggieri, a master luthier and renowned violinist, who noticed his innate talents. The scene takes place one morning, in the little church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where a cherub missing from the Sunday choir is replaced by a dirty and disheveled little urchin, who although never having heard a single religious work in his life was capable of reproducing the song in its entirety. Ruggieri, who happened to have come to listen to mass on this fateful Sunday, was stunned by the incredible gifts of the young child. Ruggieri gave Antonello his first violin and took charge of the boy’s education.

At eight years of age, Antonello gave his rst concerts in the chapel of the reknown Gonzaga court, where illustrious musicians like Gasparo Da Salo and Giuseppe Biagini had also played. At the age of eleven, his talent took him to the stages of the celebrated Genoa Theater, where women of a notable elite were mesmerized by the music of this marvelous youth, already able to play with the ease generally granted to musicians with far greater experience. Fifteen years old, Antonello far exceeds his master in both the imaginative freedom of his musical phrasing and his prodigious dexterity.

One night in December 1697, Ruggieri summoned his pupil, then thirty-three years old, to his luthier workshop located in the historic neighborhood of Cremona. That night, the moon was enveloped in a fantastic bluish light and the narrow streets of this quarter were invaded by a thick fog, creating an atmosphere among the houses, strange and surreal. After silently greeting his student, Ruggieri removed from an armoire, a mysterious ebony box covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, which he slowly unlocked with a golden key. He revealed an ancient parchment and unrolled it solemnly under the fascinated gaze of Antonello. “This scroll, he said, marked with strange signs, dates back to Ancient Egypt. This is an antique musical score. It belonged to the trusted advisor of the Pharaoh Horus Semempthem and was presented to me during one of my concerts in Turkey by the Sultan of Constantinople, who himself had gotten it from an old Persian merchant, half-savant, half-alchemist, who discovered it in the Temple of Philae ruins. For thirty years, aided by the numerous documents and manuscripts found during my travels in Europe and the Middle East, I spend each night of my existence trying to understand the enigma and endeavor to improve the translation. I am old, I feel the twilight of my life approach, as well as the hour to reveal to you the secrets of this unique parchment, Antonello.

Perhaps you will think that your master has lost his mind, or maybe, seized by fright, you will cross the threshold of this house to never return, but it is important for you to know of the mystery that surrounds this partition; for the one who is able to play this unsoundable music will possess the secret to eternal youth!”

A deep silence fell in the studio, lit by the flickers of an oil lamp. Antonello took a breath, trembling as he seized the script that his master had translated for years upon years. He posed his violin at the intersection of the neck and the collarbone, and gliding his bow across the strings, he began to sound the instrument. It was a troubling and mysterious music that no mortal had ever heard; the notes, at times extremely low and languorous, resembled the rattle of the dying or the ecstasy of the lovers in their beds, escaping in long complaints, then suddenly taking o in frightening and inconceivable ights, worthy of the work of a demented, or an indescribable creature of the underworld, to eventually succumb to treble lines, somewhat unbearable, imitating the cyclic cry of a newborn, the unheard song of a bird taking flight, or most subtly, the slaughtered beast. Then suddenly, from terror to tenderness of the sweetest kind, the incomprehensible tenderness of a mother for her child, the music becomes at once suave, sensual, spiritual, and then, again pathetic and melancholic, delivering harmonies that gnaw at your belly, wrings out all the tears of your being...

Hugues Borsarello, violin
Samuel Parent, piano

No biography found.

Booklet for Légendes Fantastiques