I usually find such choral works low on my interest scale, but in this case I situated myself and listened really closely, enjoying the intricate play of voices and instruments that were so cleanly placed in space around me. (Audiophile Audition)

Classical Music

Soprano Georgine Resick's Visions Intérieures, is a survey of the development of the song cycle. Ms. Resick sings in German, Polish, French, Swedish, and Italian, in this two-CD tour-de-force which presents a superb selection of works and composers rarely heard today. The great flowering of the song cycle occurred in early nineteenth century Germany, with its greatest representations being the well-known cycles by Schubert and Schumann. These cycles inspired numerous imitations, many of which, while not attaining the depth and breadth of their models, are charming and integrated works. On Disc One, entitled The Early German Song Cycle, Ms. Resick is accompanied by Andrew Willis, performing cycles of Weber and Kreutzer on a copy of a Louis Dulcken fortepiano (Munich 1815-20). The duo then performs cycles of Cornelius, Thalberg, and Jensen on an original 1841 Bösendorfer. On Disc Two, entitled The Wanderer: The Song Cycle in Migration, Ms. Resick is joined by Warren Jones, performing late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century cycles on a Steinway D. In an interesting cultural crossover, The Wanderer presents songs by a Russian composer of French-Lithuanian descent setting Polish poems; a German-influenced Polish composer setting German poetry; a French influenced Italian, and French composers setting translations of texts from Persia and Denmark.Georgine Resick is an internationally recognized soprano in both the operatic and concert fields. Renowned for her Mozart and Strauss interpretations, she has sung a wide variety of leading roles with the Vienna State Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Paris Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and numerous others.

Classical Music

If Wagner's Tristan had lived in the 1940s instead of Medieval times, perhaps he would have crooned Ivor Novello's "Love is my reason for living" or serenaded his Isolde with Rudolf Friml's "Love me tonight." If these popular songs don't aspire to the transcendent rapture of Wagnerian opera, they do share a sense of absorption in sheer passion. Perhaps sensing this, Ben Heppner, acclaimed as the finest Wagnerian tenor of his generation, offers here a selection of the sentimental and nostalgic love songs sung on radio, stage and screen by earlier "crossover" stars such as Mario Lanza and Nelson Eddy.
Heppner, who sings even a demanding role such as Tristan emphasizing lyrical warmth, brings an appealingly direct quality to these songs, varying from the emphatic to the intimate in approach. If he misses the fun in some of the music (although he finds it in Mana-Zucca's swaggering "I love life") there is no doubting his affection for it, and the orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick are romantically enveloping without being schmaltzy. Familiar tunes like "I'll be seeing you" and Lanza's theme song "Be my love" are supplemented by appealing obscurities by Noel Coward and Eric Coates, among others, and Heppner's operatically supported high notes ring out in stirring celebration of these charming songs.
REVIEWS:
Opera News (2/2000) - "...Heppner's heroic good cheer and ebullient singing give a gilded edge to this album of old-fashioned favorites... reveling in their deep-purple lyrics and gloriously sentimental melodies ...he sounds as if he's having a wonderful time..."

Listen to only the first track of this recording, a heart-wrenching setting of Emily Dickinson's poem "I shall not live in vain" sung by Renée Fleming, and be immediately convinced that this compilation by Jake Heggie is a must for any lover of song. THE FACES OF LOVE testifies to Heggie's nimble sensitivity in setting words to music, as he draws from a wide range of poetry, while always seeming to find the most unforced and compelling means to make these lyrics sing.
As the San Francisco Opera's first CHASE Composer-in-Residence, Heggie has had the benefit of forming professional relationships with some of the world's greatest singers, a number of whom appear on this disk in songs written expressly for them. This intimate knowledge of individual voices and personalities has enabled Heggie to write unusually idiomatic vocal music for such distinctive singers as Fleming, Carol Vaness, Frederica von Stade, and Jennifer Larmore--the four most thoughtful collaborators on this disk.
REVIEWS:
Newsday (4/30/00, p.26) - "...The disc, which is an impressive calling card, makes it clear what these singers respond to...[Heggie's] melodies play out in floating, sometimes startling movements, like a breeze-tossed kite...Heggie can also be a delightful colorist, possessed of a natural, elegant eloquence..."

RAVEL: TRIO DEBUSSY, RESPIGH

I have an old HMV LP with a youthful looking Andre Previn on the sleeve (9/74 - nla) and coupling the Ravel Trio and Shostakovich E minor Trio, and very good it is; the other artists were Young Uck Kim and Ralph Kirshbaum. Now an older Previn returns to the Ravel, and with new colleagues brings to it the same affection, together with a chaste quality wholly appropriate to this composer who evinced an honourable bashfulness yet whose passion is unfailingly genuine and moving - surely one reason for his immense popularity today. The Trio is one of the largest and grandest of chamber works, yet its rhetoric is without hollowness (and how rare that is in French music!) and it somehow just stays within the bounds of chamber music: oddly enough, one of the most shattering climaxes comes in the slow movement. A rich yet un-glitzy recording helps this intensely felt yet refined performance, and altogether the artists offer a memorable musical experience.

Debussy's long lost piano trio is a youthful work that I'm certain he would have hated to have played at all, but scholars don't always mind about that sort of thing. Having come to light fairly recently, this jejune piece now has several performances on disc. Undoubtedly it needs skilful playing to avoid seeming embarrassingly weak alongside the Ravel, and the present artists do a very decent job, presenting its naIvety without apology. Their disc is not generous at 48 minutes, but the performance of the Ravel above all makes it value for money.

-- Gramophone [11/1995]

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This selection contains both DDD and ADD recordings.
Net proceeds from the sale of this album will go to the American Red Cross.

This selection contains both DDD and ADD recordings.

If you can be disconcerted, I suppose it should be possible, linguistically speaking (and how else?), to be concerted. Brahms, in this sense, and taken in large doses such as are offered on these two records, is really just about the most concerted composer I know. The withering of the grass that is flesh, the "Menschenhass", the indifference of the gods to human life though it meets with disasters "like water dashed from crag to crag": in short, the worst that the Bible and the classics of his own language can throw at him, he surveys without flinching and transmutes into the goodness of finely structured, beautifully orchestrated music, eminently human yet capable of sublimity, never merely complacent but also (as it seems to me) very rarely disconcerted.

Sir Colin Davis's way with him strengthens such reactions. In the Schicksalslied his is the most serene account of Elysium and of the compatibility of Elysian security and earthly turbulence. Conductors as different from each other as Blomstedt (Decca) and Sinopoli (DG) are alike in their apparent conviction that what has to be done with this piece is to split it asunder, expose the chasm between its two worlds. Blomstedt's approach is probably philosophical, Sinopoli's dramatic, but they both go for the black and the white of it: Blomstedt takes 'Elysium' slowly and 'Earth' brutally fast and loud. Sinopoli moves in more doubtful fashion in the empyrean but then with demonic drive in the depiction of harried humanity. Davis forces nothing: he encourages neither lethargy nor wildness. Musically, his performance makes perfectly good sense of the return to calm, and all the argument about whether it constitutes an intentionally acquiescent 'happy ending' seems rather wide of the mark: musically the piece is a unity, and Davis's reading, like Brahms's composition, is thoroughly 'concerted'.

The soloist for the Alto Rhapsody is Nathalie Stutzmann, not entirely steady in her opening phrases but then deep-toned, and unusual in lightening the upper note in "der Falk der Liebe". [These performances] are gentle, both as recordings and interpretations. A bonus is the inclusion of the attractive and rarely heard Marienlieder of 1859: seven carol-like a cappella pieces, showing, among other things, the fine blend and sensitive shading of the Bavarian choir.

-- Gramophone [5/1993]

Exceptional singers like Thomas Quasthoff and Ingeborg Danz Recorded during the Oregon Bach Festival "Beautifully crafted and very lovely" (Soundscapes)"... a consummate performance leaving nothing to be desired" (Seddeutsche Zeitung)

IN LOVE JULIA MIGENES JOHNSON

Classical Music

V2: TEAR HEAVEN

3 Tenors of the Golden Age

Sounds of Brazil & Argentina

Ex oriente lux - the musical light from Eastern Europe shines in a calm yet incredibly powerful way. Traditional a capella choral music here has gone its own way for centuries and has not been directly dependent on the development of secular music. Especially striking is the renunciation of the elements of leading-tone tension and cadential harmony so characteristic of Western major-minor tonality. Historical developments have not passed Eastern European church music by without a trace, of course - many innovations, strongly modified, have been adapted to the liturgically influenced context by well-known composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arvo Pärt and Krzysztof Penderecki. From this process, very attractive choral works have seen the light of day, especially in recent years, from which several have been impressively realised here from the standpoint of sound quality. Following pioneering releases such as the first complete recording of Hugo Distler's Mörike Choral Song Book, the Carmina Mundi Chamber Choir continues to set new standards of excellence in choral music production with this recording.

English Renaissance

Bryars: Al suon dell'acque scriva (Madrigals, Vol. 1)

Classical Music

Classical Music