Presto Recording of the Week
2nd September 2022

Fatma Said (soprano), Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Sascha Goetzel

Minué cantado
Massenet: Obéissons quand leur voix appelle (from Manon)
Messager: Il est dans les nuits espagnoles (from La Fiancée en Loterie)
Straus, O: Je t’aime
Strauss, J, II: Wiener Blut (from Wiener Blut)
Lehár: Giuditta: Meine Lippen sie Kussen so heiss
Offenbach: Barcarolle (from Les Contes d'Hoffmann )
Gounod: Ah! Je veux vivre dans ce rêve (from Roméo et Juliette)
Giménez: La tempránica: Zapateado 'La tarántula é un bicho mú malo'
Loewe, F: I Could Have Danced All Night (My Fair Lady)
Schröder, F: Ich tanze mit dir in den Himmel hinein (from Sieben Ohrfeigen)
Berlin, I: Cheek to cheek
Weill, K: Youkali
Gardel: Por Una Cabeza
Villoldo: El choclo
Piazzólla: Yo Soy Maria
Piazzólla: Oblivion
Gainsbourg: La Javanaise
Paoli: Senza fine
George Merill: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)

Fatma Said follows her award-winning debut album El Nour with an even more colourful release. Imbued with the spirit of the dance, Kaleidoscope spins across cultures, genres and eras, moving from Strauss, Lehár, Offenbach, Gounod, Weill and Piazzolla to Broadway (My Fair Lady) and the hits of Serge Gainsbourg, Gino Paoli and Whitney Houston. The young Egyptian soprano sings in French, German, English, Spanish, Italian and Arabic, and among her partners are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and conductor Sascha Goetzel, mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary.

“Music and dance interlink as one,” says Fatma Said, “They are emotion and physicality in unison. This album is a montage of many different songs and arias, each with its own story to tell through a particular style of music and rhythm. You will encounter my voice turning and changing kaleidoscopically, giving these disparate characters the diversity of voices and musical styles they need: multiple vocal colours, dance inflections, linguistic timbres. With each of them I could have danced – and sung – all night.”

"it’s evident that the singer’s love and affinity for all this music is grounded in real-life experience on the dance-floor: the rhythmic impetus and ebb and flow of each number is clearly born of something beyond the notes on the page, whether she’s elongating the phrases of a Viennese waltz to delicious effect or tapping into the raw energy of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires." - Presto Music, 2nd September 2022