Pauline Viardot-Garcia

Pauline Viardot sings russian songs 1

Pauline Viardot sings Russian poems: The edition of songs by Pauline Viardot on texts by Russian poets is the result of an international collaboration. In 2018, Parisian editor Marc Pierre came to Furore Verlag with the idea of publishing this collection of songs to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2021. Michelle Pauline Viardot-García, née García, (* July 18, 1821 in Paris; † May 18, 1910 in Paris) was one of the most famous and versatile artists of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, she played a major role in shaping the musical life of her time in various countries, particularly in France, Germany, England and Russia. She sang, composed and taught, arranged and edited works by other composers, collected folk song texts and melodies, organized musical salons and also maintained an extensive correspondence. This collection of Russian poems is the first to bring together Pauline Viardot’s 18 songs, to which she added poems by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814-1841), Afanassi Afanassyevich Fet (1820-1892), Alexei Wassiljewitsch Kolzow (1809-1842), Fjodor Iwanowitsch Tjuttschew (1803-1873), Iwan Sacharowitsch Surikow (1841-1880) and Iwan Sergejewitsch Turgenjew (1818-1883).
These melodies are a remarkable example of the rich cultural cooperation between Russia, France and Germany. The corresponding song texts were much appreciated in Russia. Turgenev read these works in the Viardots’ salon near Paris. It was certainly he who suggested to Pauline that they be set to music in the original language. This two-volume collection of trilingual Russian-French-German scores brings together various sources whose manuscripts and engravings date back more than 130 years. Among these compositions are two first publications.