Both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar is a completist. Following complete cycles of piano sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart, he presents 12 Great Piano Sonatas by Franz Schubert – the composer’s 11 finished sonatas and the seminal fragment D840. Pienaar relishes in these revelatory works, their extraordinarily detailed possibilities of characterisation, their call for immense energy and abandon, and navigating the vast dreamscapes that unfold in the course of this six-hour musical journey. “dazzling precision and clarity ... he communicates an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them to give delight. Brilliant.” (Gramophone, Editor’s Choice on The Long 17th Century) “dizzying virtuosity ... fresh, spontaneous, original readings that shed new light on the keyboard player’s Bible” (BBC Music Magazine on J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier)

 

REVIEW:

 

These readings for me capture the spirit of Schubert’s piano style. It is only when you set Pienaar next to the established greats that he lacks something in presence and imagination, but only by a small degree. His playing is at once natural and sympathetic, and blessedly free of artifice. It is also necessary to qualify my generalization that Pienaar’s approach is lively and alert. He recognizes the greater ambition and amplitude of the opus posthumous sonatas and changes his approach accordingly.

 

– Fanfare

Greetings from Italy where music is everywhere! Celebrating 20 years of an illustrious international career with their 14th recording and first on AVIE, the multiple award-winning Quartetto di Cremona sends Italian Postcards, assembling evocations of the Mediterranean country by four non-natives. Mozart penned his first string quartet during his first Italian journey to the town of Lodi. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade takes its inspiration from poetry and ancient Italian melodies. Extending the quartet repertoire, the Cremona commissioned British-French-Israeli composer Nimrod Borenstein, whose Cieli d’Italia was inspired by the colors of the Italian skies. The album’s idyllic conclusion is Tchaikovsky’s string sextet, “Souvenir de Florence,” in which the Cremona is joined by violist Ori Kam (Jerusalem Quartet) and cellist Eckart Runge (Artemis Quartet).



REVIEW:

The Quartetto di Cremona have an uncanny knack for sounding like more than just four players, their sound rich, vibrant, and resplendent. These are as sunny, Italianate performances as one could want.

– Classicsl Candor (John J Puccio)

San Francisco-native Henry Dehlinger, a prodigiously talented pianist and singer, turned his hand to full-time composition in 2015. The skill and splendour of his music belies the relatively brief number of years he has committed pen to paper to create a considerable oeuvre of orchestral, chamber and choral music. His natural affinity for vocal music has also led to a number of works for solo voice. At That Hour is a superlative showcase for Henry’s craftmanship as well as his close collaborators, husband-and-wife team soprano Danielle Talamantes and bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson. All of the songs on this original album of Henry’s art songs were written expressly for Danielle’s and Kerry’s impassioned voices. The title track opens Henry’s 10-part song cycle set to texts by James Joyce. Inspiration for other songs comes from poetry by T. S. Eliot, Dante, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Hebrew writings. Throughout, Henry’s modern yet tonal compositional voice shines through as he renders a diverse palette of musical styles to amplify the words he sets to music.

Anna Clynne’s enormous palette of colors and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art and videography – combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal.

The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats.

More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The album concludes with rewind, conducted by André de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagining the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes.

Mythologies became an instant media and popular success when it was released in October 2020 – “hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020”, according to New York Music Daily. The album is now presented in both a CD version and as a magnificent 2-LP set. The splendor of the glossy gatefold and 180-gram vinyl in particular is an appropriate match for Anna’s enormous palette of colors and special effects.

REVIEWS:

I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last. The present release of her compositions spanning the decade from 2005 up to 2015 thus offers a fine survey of her recent orchestral music and there is no better place to begin with than the first work recorded here, the short Masquerade, a brilliant concert-opener if ever there was one. The music skips along with high spirits until it concludes with a quotation from John Playford's The English Dancing Master which comes as a surprise - although I for one would not be surprised to learn that that very tune had already been there since the very beginning but cleverly and subtly disguised. Anyway, this short and brilliant work presents Anna Clyne's music-making in a nutshell, as it were.

These superb works receive committed readings from all concerned and, besides singling out the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing at its customary best, I would like to draw attention to Jennifer Koh's impressive take on the violin part in The Seamstress, one of the gems in this collection. I hope that many will derive as much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Mythologies is an apt title choice for this striking collection by London-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980). However ancient mythological tales might appear at the surface level, their archetypal themes resonate across the ages, as relevant today as when they were born, and they're fantastical in nature too, populated as they are with gods and mythical beasts. In similar manner, Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.

Certainly a key part of the recording's appeal has to do with unpredictability: in not conforming to long-established scripts, the pieces are able to unfold in any number of stylistic directions, even if ultimately each develops in accordance with her sensibility.

-- Textura

Christopher Tyler Nickel’s contemporary classical compositions pack a bracing and emotional punch. His award-winning works for the concert hall, stage and screen have been heard in over 160 countries by audiences in the tens of thousands. His experience as an oboist instills a confidence to compose with an exhilarating freedom to explore the vast expressive range of the instrument, from lyrical and plaintive to acerbic and brittle. The world-premiere recordings of these three concertos for oboe and its lower-pitched siblings the oboe d’amore and bass oboe receive dazzling performances by Mary Lynch, principal oboe of the Seattle Symphony, and Harrison Linsey, oboist with the Washington D.C.-based National Symphony Orchestra. Grammy Award-winning David Sabee, a tireless advocate of contemporary classical music, conducts the Seattle-based Northwest Sinfonia.

Philadelphia-based period-instrument ensemble Night Music re-creates an afternoon of music making from October 1801 at the Austrian capital’s Palais Arnstein, with a flamboyant Quintet for flute and strings by Joseph Kraus, a duo by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf for the unusual combination of viola and double bass, and a chamber arrangement – by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon utilizing the same instrumentation as the Kraus Quintet – of perhaps the most notorious of symphonic surprises. NIGHT MUSIC is a Philadelphia-based chamber ensemble dedicated to exploring and performing music of the Revolutionary era, roughly 1760 to 1825. Their repertory ranges from duos and trios to large-scale chamber works combining strings and winds, such as the imaginative symphony arrangements that were so popular around 1800, to concertos, cantatas, and concert arias. The 2019-2020 season highlights include guest appearances at Kenyon College and the University of Pennsylvania’s “Music at the Pavilion” Series. Recent engagements include the PhilaLandmarks Early Music Concert Series and the Early Music at St. James series in Lancaster.

 

REVIEW:

 

The Kraus Flute Quintet makes an excellent opening, likely to make you wonder why we don’t hear more of this Swedish composer’s music. Although the flute is first among equals here, it’s by no means a showy piece for a soloist. Night Music perfectly integrate flute and strings, and the recording is also very well integrated.

 

Is Salomon’s arrangement of Haydn's ‘Surprise’ Symphony equally worthy of recording? The music makes a good effect, charming music at this scale, receiving a charming performance; as in the Kraus, the flautist and the engineers don’t allow the instrument to dominate. With such small forces, however, the feature which earned the work its nickname, the sudden change from quiet to loud in the andante second movement, designed ‘to make the ladies jump’ – Beecham used to bring it off especially well – doesn’t quite come off, despite a claim to the contrary in the booklet. That said, this is an enjoyable work in its own inevitably diminished right.

 

I can’t claim great music status for the Dittersdorf Duo, but it, too, receives a performance which brings out its attractions, and the recording captures the unusual sound of the combination very effectively.

 

– MusicWeb International

This formidable release features Inbal Segev performing Elgar’s emotive Cello Concerto coupled with DANCE, an inspiring new work by Grammy-nominated English composer Anna Clyne that was commissioned by Inbal. On this powerful recording, Marin Alsop conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Marin introduced Inbal to Anna, sparking a special synergy between the three women. While Anna was composing DANCE, a five-movement concerto inspired by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, further connections ensued. Anna’s soulful and vibrant music combines cultures that include her Irish-English family, Polish-Jewish ancestry and Inbal’s Israeli-American heritage.

Inbal expounds, “Anna’s music has an old-soul sensibility but is fresh and modern at the same time. This juxtaposition of old and new has always appealed to me; it suits my playing, as well as the tone of my 1673 Ruggieri cello.” Inbal’s idea to record Anna Clyne’s DANCE alongside Elgar’s Cello Concerto is timely: the two works were composed exactly 100 years apart. Inbal enthuses, “It is so rewarding to record and perform the work of a contemporary female composer whose music withstands comparison with Elgar’s. The two pieces share a certain sensibility – a romanticism, warmth and humanity – that transcends any stylistic differences.” Elgar’s Cello Concerto, written in the wake of World War I, is deeply reflective. Anna Clyne’s DANCE is optimistic and forward-looking. Inbal’s recording of these two cello concertos is timeless.

Much lauded for her interpretations of Hans Gál’s concerto and chamber music works, Sarah Beth Briggs presents the composer’s beguiling Three Preludes alongside well-loved works by three of his greatest Austrian forebears – Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert. Following meticulous examination of the original scores, Briggs sensitively translates the authentic character of each work to the resources of a modern piano with revelatory results. Pianist Sarah Beth Briggs – an artist of extraordinary magnetism (Daily Telegraph) – is a leading recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician. A long-standing pupil of the late Denis Matthews, she gained a Hindemith Scholarship to study chamber music in Switzerland with celebrated violist Bruno Giuranna, and continued her studies there with renowned Arrau pupil, Chilean pianist Edith Fischer.

Christoph Eschenbach reunites with Paris-based Thymos Quartetin Schubert’s triumphant chamber work, the “Trout” Quintet, a recording that celebrates the 80th birthday of the great pianist / conductor. From babbling brook and leaping fish, this present-day Schubertiade relocates to a 19thcentury Viennese salon, with a selection of the composer’s waltzes in unique chamber music arrangements and concludes with selected Ländler, performed by pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, ranging in mood from iridescent to intimate. “vivid and high-powered ... an ensemble of exceptional musical imagination and skill” (Washington Post) “a magnificent album ... a rare example of expressiveness and distinction” (Le Monde, on Dvo?ák’sLove Songs, Cypresses, Piano Quintet in A major, AV2234)

-----

REVIEWS:

In this delightful recording, the limelight is shared between Christoph Eschenbach’s crystalline piano playing and the creamy string sound, underpinned by the rumbling, bouncing bass. The tempo is elastic, yielding. And there’s no rigid ensemble, either; the mood is convivial, like conversing friends who occasionally interrupt each other. Eschenbach’s solo moments have memorable rhetorical swagger.

– BBC Music Magazine

Eschenbach and the Thymos Quartet had me smiling from the very first bars of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. It’s a performance teeming with delightful incident right the way through, in fact, yet such consistent attention to detail never precludes expansive phrasing or inhibits burbling rhythmic vivacity.

– Gramophone

Award-winning baroque violinist Alana Youssefian and her ensemble Le Bien-Aimé debut on AVIE showcasing music of the brilliant but seldom-heard French violinist and composer Louis-Gabriel Guillemain. His precociousness was noted at an early age, and Guillemain went on to serve in the court of King Louis XV. His symphonies are as uplifting and innovative as his sonatas are astonishingly virtuosic. While his compositions tested the abilities of his contemporaries, his lasting legacy may have been his knack for bridging the baroque and classical styles, seamlessly adapting to shifting tastes in music and art of his time. Alana rises to the challenges of Guillemain’s technical demands with ease. The young, New York-based violinist is a sought-after soloist for baroque, classical, and romantic repertoire. She has been honoured with the top prize in The Juilliard School’s Historical Performance Concerto Competition and a coveted fellowship by The English Concert in America.

Lauren Scott’s passion for the lever harp inspires her interpretations of atmospheric works by 20th century composers ranging from John Cage and Peter Maxwell Davies to Lennon & McCartney, as well as her own ambient compositions. Beyond the Horizon, Lauren’s debut solo album, casts a twilight glow on the unique qualities of the traditional lever harp –also known as the Celtic harp –and the kaleidoscopic colors it produces, sonorities that Lauren enhances with extended techniques including note bending and percussive effects in her own music. The result is a beautiful and distinctive album with broad appeal. Born in Australia, UK-based Lauren performs with many of the country’s leading orchestras, in West End shows, on commercial recordings, and for radio and TV. Active in the international harp community, Lauren avidly fosters the next generation of harp players, and has had her music published and performed world-wide.

REVIEWS:

At last, a harp album that isn't mostly the standard solo harp repertoire played on a plushy pedal harp by someone who doesn't clean the palette. Lauren Scott (b 1970), whose family moved from Australia to England when she was 6, has put together an album of works that sound better on a lever harp, which has more of an early-instrument tonality (what she calls "the open quality of folk origins, an earthier sound") produced by a thinner sounding board and strings with less tension, resulting in less resonance. By replacing gut strings with nylon and fiber ones, she can also create a wider array of colors.

Scott herself is an excellent composer of shorter works. The album opens with her 'Elegy', 'Free Running', and 'Blue Moon Rising', which have lovely fluid folk-like melodies with accompaniment that could be written only by someone with classical training. Just as important, they show off an instrument with a treble, slightly wiry sound and a mellow lutelike quality in the lower range, much like the best fortepianos can have distinctly different colors in their treble, midrange, and bass. In 'Gypsy Dance' she manages to produce solid bass resonance, using it as an alluring pedal point. In 'Beyond the Horizon', a sort of threenote bass passacaglia with treble variations, she takes advantage of her instrument's quicker decay and refuses to fill in the open spaces between the notes. 'Celestial Spirals' also is based on a swirling three-note motif that is the basis for the three-note largo that offers the work's pulse. 'Crepuscule' opens as a slow lament (a reflection on her father's dementia) before becoming more melodically hopeful.

In her lucid liner notes she says that John Cage's In a Landscape (the title of the album) is the piece that initiated this, her first solo album, because it didn't work on the pedal harp. It's a nine-minute meditative piece that slowly evolves around a pentatonic Japanese-like motif. I found it initially engaging, especially with Scott's subtle colors...The work here that has the strongest, most sustained character is Scott's arrangement of Peter Maxwell Davies's 9-minute Farewell to Stromness, written in response to efforts to establish uranium mining on his beloved Orkney Island. It combines two themes, one of persistent grit, the other more mellow, but both with an insistent beat of peaceful protest rather than violent raucousness. What a stunning display of colors Scott creates! She also does very well in her arrangement of Lennon-McCartney's 'Across the Universe' where she works out the tune through an array of ornamentation and tone colors without making it feel "pops".

-- American Record Guide

In life and music, Grammy Award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman is a master storyteller. Where Only Stars Can Hear Us is a journey through the songs of Franz Schubert, a composer who was able to capture joy and sorrow in a single moment like no other. Karim’s voyage traverses themes of darkness and yearning, guided throughout by moonbeams and shining stars. His partner is historical keyboardist Yi-heng Yang who plays on a fortepiano built by Joseph Simon in Vienna in 1830, adding an air of authenticity from Schubert’s time. “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine) “a pianist of “astonishing skill and vividness” (The New York Times)



REVIEWS:

Sulayman is always engaging, with an appealing honesty to his approach and a vividness to his storytelling. His light, silvery tenor is in many ways suited to much of the programme’s theme, but the flipside is a paleness and shortness of sap and sweetness; nor does the tenor’s German always feel entirely natural. Adjust to the tone, though, and there’s still a great deal to enjoy in these performances.

– Gramophone

This Schubert has its priorities straight. Text comes first in Sulayman's interpretations. The small inflections in his timbre convey textual themes equally well to audiences of all German-speaking levels. From the seemingly bratty child in Erlkönig (RIP), to the poignantly longing fisherman of Des fischers Liebesglück, he is an actor first.

His voice is clear and transparent. He barely covers his sound, allowing every ounce of that underlying emotion to shine through.

Both performers treat these lieder as chamber music. It's unclear who leads the stretches that come so often throughout the album, but whenever one part pushes, the other follows. Yang's slightly delayed cadences gain weight with a quick breath from Sulayman. Sulayman stretches a phrase climax, Yang rolls a chord to help accent. The two work symbiotically, melding the intense drama from each of their parts into a composite, deeply affecting pathos.

– Classical Music Geek

The ever-inquisitive pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar presents The Long 17th Century: A Cornucopia of Early Keyboard Music. The Long 17th Century refers to the period from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, an era noted for forward-thinking individuality and invention in all areas of life. This two-and-a-half hour recital surveys a pan-European variety of styles, genres and techniques, and comprises 36 works, each by a different composer, many not recorded before on a modern piano. Daniel-Ben Pienaar has been critically acclaimed for his previous albums on Avie: “a gloriously multi-faceted opus maximus ... Amazing and very much worth hearing” –Der Spiegel(on Beethoven’s Complete Piano Sonatas, AV2320) “dizzying virtuosity ... fresh, spontaneous, original readings that shed new light on the keyboard player’s Bible” –BBC Music Magazine (on J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, AV2299)



REVIEWS:

Have you noticed the growing trend of pianists taking up 17th-century keyboard works on the modern concert grand? Perhaps it has to do with the desire to be rebellious, or to attain a certain level of intellectual caché. Yet pianists also have valid artistic reasons to explore this repertoire. First and foremost are the sheer musical rewards. Secondly, the freedom one has in regard to phrasing, tempo, and embellishment can be liberating and creatively stimulating. For this remarkable two-disc collection, Daniel-Ben Pienaar has chosen 36 17th-century keyboard works, each by a different composer. He brilliantly reveals how a piano’s dynamic scope, timbral diversity, and sustaining capabilities can vividly and meaningfully serve this repertoire.

One noticeable example is in Tarquino Merula’s Capriccio cromatico, where the ascending legato chromatic lines and detaché counterline with repeated notes take on distinctive characters. The Weckmann D minor Canzon’s virtuosic repeated notes gain color and drama through pianistic inflection, and via Pienaar’s dapper fingerwork, of course. Terraced dynamics and half-tints of pedal evoke trumpets and winds in Gabrieli’s joyous Canzon quarta.

What bracing trills and hair-trigger scale passages Pienaar delivers throughout Muffat’s Partita IV, while serving up a more unified and colorfully contrasted reading of Buxtehude’s large-scale “La Capricciosa” Variations than most period performers manage to do. And while Pienaar allows for pockets of space or “air” between the notes in Keril’s Passacaglia, he manages to shape the sounds and silences into long-lined entities. I encourage listeners to discover their own favorite works and magic moments across this intelligently programmed, splendidly engineered, and boundlessly satisfying release.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

 

What makes it work is not just the dazzling precision and clarity of Pienaar’s finger technique (though that is certainly a vital factor), but the intelligence that has gone into his interpretations. He also communicates an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them to give delight.

 

–Gramophone (Editor's Choice; June 2020)

A 2020 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album!

On Clairières, Grammy Award-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang pay homage to Lili and Nadia Boulanger, two exceptional composers of the 20th century who have often been overlooked in favour of their male counterparts. At the heart of the album is Lili’s song cycle Clairières dans le ciel. Alongside are a selection of songs set to poetry by the sisters’ contemporaries Verlaine, Maeterlinck, Jammes and Samain. Described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” American tenor Nicholas Phan is increasingly recognized as an artist of distinction. Praised for his keen intelligence, captivating stage presence and natural musicianship, he performs regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. Also an avid recitalist, in 2010 he co-founded the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC) to promote art song and vocal chamber music. Acclaimed by Opera News as being “among the top accompanists of her generation,” pianist Myra Huang regularly performs in recitals and chamber music concerts around the world. In addition to many chamber music concerts and recitals at the Palau De Les Arts in Valencia, Spain, she recently performed recitals at Carnegie Halls Weill Hall, the University of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with tenor Nicholas Phan, and at Carnegie Halls Zankel Hall with soprano Susanna Phillips.

-----

REVIEWS:

Phan has deeply internalised this music – with highly detailed, personal, specific and often quite volatile responses to Lili Boulanger’s particular fusion of music and poetry in Clairières dans le ciel – though not through the lens of Debussy. Boulanger taken on her own terms. This less genteel approach to French art song has also been explored by François Le Roux; still, Phan is likely to be controversial. But to these American ears, Phan delivers a more emotionally comprehensive (and deeply welcome) vision of this worthy music.

– Gramophone

Lili Boulanger, who died during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic at the age of 24, is recognised as one of the 20th century’s great unfulfilled talents, while her elder sister Nadia, who died in 1979, went on to become one of its most influential teachers , espousing the doctrine of neoclassicism.

Lili’s songs dominate this disc – there are 16 by her against five by her sister. Even in the earliest numbers, the differences between the composers are clear. Nadia is the more conservative, stylistically cautious – her songs take middle-period Fauré as their starting point – while her sister’s pieces are melodically and harmonically much more chromatic. Some of the piano accompaniments in Lili’s song cycle could have been lifted from a Debussy prelude.

What they share, though, is meticulous concern for every musical and verbal detail, and Phan’s wonderfully poised and precise singing matches it perfectly. He is an outstanding interpreter of French song, and Huang is an equally attentive partner. It’s hard to imagine these Boulanger songs could have more convincing advocacy.

– Guardian (UK)

A WQXR-FM Best Classical Recording for 2019

Twentieth-century African American composer Margaret Bonds receives long overdue recognition with the world premiere recording of her crowning achievement, The Ballad of the Brown King. With an expressly written libretto by Bonds’ friend Langston Hughes, this Christmas cantata which focuses on Balthazar, the dark-skinned king who journeyed to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus Christ, is beautifully interpreted by New York City-based The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra, outstanding soloists soprano Laquita Mitchell, mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford and tenor Noah Stewart, under the baton of their charismatic conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather. Bonds authority Dr. Ashley Jackson contributes the inspired liner notes. This unique seasonal album also includes a selection of specially arranged songs, including a setting of Hughes’ seminal poem I, Too, Sing America, performed by baritone Merriweather and Jackson on solo harp.

REVIEW:

Nearly 60 years after its premiere, conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather and the phenomenal New York-based Dessoff Choirs have at last provided a way experience Margaret Bonds’ genius cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King. After luxuriating in this sumptuous setting of the Nativity story (with a libretto by Langston Hughes), be sure to listen to Bonds’ heart-rending Three Dream Portraits, sung forcefully by Merriweather himself.

–WQXR-FM (105.9 FM, NYC - Zev Kane)