Eleni-Lydia Stamellou sings Mauro Giuliani

A very beautiful and touching recording.

I love the voice of the singer. It's very warm, with a unique vivid and velvet timbre, tender musicality, high level virtuosity and it penetrates your heart with all kinds of emotions. Also great pronunciation in all three languages.

The guitarist has a very beautiful warm color with great finger technique. He plays temperamental at the same time which gives it the perfect combination. They have a great connection with each other. This makes the music very playful and emotional. These are songs that are very delightful to listen to. I hope to hear more of this duo in the future.

This is really an important release.

Mauro Giuliani is very well known composer in the sophisticated world of Classical Guitar today. We know and have a good discography for most of his solo guitar compositions and chamber music. Those, you can find easily in the market. However, that is not the situation when it comes to the vocal compositions of Giuliani and this is really strange because his vocal music is probably some of the best quality pieces Giuliani ever wrote.

I know three productions previous to this. One called "The Dream Songs Project" containing op.89, op.13 and op.95. Then we have a version with a Tenor (not the best voice for this kind of music in my opinion, they are very much soprano songs) that has a Tenor and three groups of songs, op.95, op.89 and op.39. Then I have an "old" recording from 1989 with a mixed bag of music by Giuliani including his songs op.95 and op.89.

So it is a happy day and good news that we find a full program dedicated to Giuliani's songs and recorded in High Resolution Audio! Bingo!!!! This recording contains all the songs by Giuliani with the exception of the Romance op.27 and 5" Ariette op.95". There is one from this group of songs recorded in this album, but only one.

Mauro Giuliani songs are really a discovery. The melodic line is something you don't find in the rest of his compositions maybe with the exclusion of his guitar concerts. Here, we discover an inspiration and talent for melody of the highest caliber. In this recording we have songs in French, German and Italian. We have all the "Romances" op. 13 and op.22, (both in French), the "Sei Cavatine op.39" (Italian text), the "Sechs Lieder op.89" in German, I believe the first world recording of "Romance op. 151" and the "Ode di Anacreonte, op.151bis". We also have the first of the op.95 "Ariette": "Ombre amere".

Eleni-Lydia Stamellou sings these songs from the bottom of her heart. You never get tired of hearing her singing. The pitch is perfect, the color of her voice is very unique, singular, and special. It is very appropriate for this kind of Lieder. She has a well controlled and nice vibrato and her stylistic domain on the songs is perfect. The balance with the guitar couldn't be better. Guitarist Agustin Maruri provides his beautiful sound, clean technique and the best musicality as always.

Thanks a lot to HR Recordings for putting these songs in the right place. I am sure that many are going to be surprised by this great collection of very special songs.