Featuring the first recording of BRITTEN's Les Illuminations, Op. 18 sung in English, from a brand new translation by Timothy Ades. Also includes the original French version. Coupled with Samuel BARBER's dramatic masterpiece Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24, written just a few years after Les Illuminations. Among the most personal and powerful music ever written for the human voice, Britten and Barber's masterpiece settings of texts by Rimbaud and Agee continue to resonate intensely. Taken together, they form bookends to the cataclysms of the 20th century, with it's two life-shattering world wars. The colours, verbal and harmonic, of such human drama are a dazzling mix, running the gamut of life in dramatic flux. Mild mannered it is not, though parts are hauntingly beautiful.

Marcy Rosen and Diane Walsh present fresh readings of three masterpieces from the cello repertoire. Ms. Rosen studied Barber's cello sonata with Orlando Cole, who worked closely with Barber on the editing of the composition, later premiering the work with Barber at the piano at New York City's Town Hall in 1933.

The piano duos presented here, all drawn from the mid-20th century, have their inspiration in dance or ballet: but thankfully, that red flag for program music - is it a hopeless prisoner of a storyline or visual narrative? - shows no sign of rising. All three works stand majestically on their own: Rachmaninoff's autumnal self-eulogy, The Symphonic Dances, Barber's Souvenirs, a whimsical collage of the Gilded Era ballroom, and Piazzolla's Tango for Two Pianos (arr. P. Ziegler). And, in the case of Piazzolla, we witness the tango, as it moves from the cafe to the concert hall, shedding the strictures of dance itself.

Her fifth recital album on Signum Records, celebrated soprano Mary Bevan returns with a selection of French songs, featuring works by composers including Britten, Ravel, Debussy and Faure.

Jeffrey Chappell performs three great pianos sonatas from the 20th Century, by Alberto Ginastera, Charles T. Griffes, and Samuel Barber

This repertoire spans almost eighty years of classical composers' excursions into blues, folk, hip-hop, jazz, musical theater, samba, tango, techno and other genres. Each piece goes beyond mere stylistic imitation, cultivating an authentic expressivity within a transcribed musical language rooted in the Americas. ___Alexander Crosett

- The 20th century saw an immense and revolutionary development in musical styles and language, some radically parting from the fundamental musical traditions. This CD presents works for flute and piano by composers who adhered to their own, personal musical language, expressing only their own feelings of beauty, emotion and esthetics, without following current trends or theories. - Presented are the following composers: Rhene Baton, Francis Poulenc, Albert Roussel, Darius Milhaud, Ernst Krenek, Paul Hoffer, Samuel Barber, Ferenc Farkas, Franco Margola, Giuseppe Mule, Jean Michel Damase, Luciano Michelini: a very diverse selection of accessible, highly enjoyable music. - Gian-Luca Petrucci has been first flute in several of the top orchestras of Italy. He was professor at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. As a scholar he published monographs on several (Italian) composers: Mercadante, Briccialdi, Gazzelloni, de Lorenzo and Mozart. His previous recordings for Brilliant Classics include works by Frederick The Great (BC 96538), Bohm (96862) and Mercadante (BC 96152).

Dazzling as the Queen of the Night, deeply moving in Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, Natalie Dessay also made her mark on the operatic stage in the roles of Olympia, Manon, Musetta and Cleopatra. After training at the Atelier Lyrique de l'Opera National de Paris and pursuing an international operatic career, Natalie Dessay decided to devote herself to spoken theatre, chansons and the song repertory. The duo she formed in 2011 with her artistic partner Philippe Cassard has given one hundred and thirty-five performances around the world, completely reinventing the song recital as a unique moment of expression, embodiment and shared emotion. Ten years after her last appearance at the Opera Bastille in La Fille du regiment, she has chosen to give her farewell performance on the stage of the Palais Garnier on 31 March 2025. This is the last album from this legendary duo, a fitting way to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of one of the greatest sopranos of her generation.

Track Listing
1. Prelude
2. Ring, The
3. Yitta's Story
4. Baby Bolero
5. New Life, A
6. Mikvah
7. Sonia's Heart
8. Chamesh Avanim
9. Fire
10. Funeral
11. Boro Park
12. Family Business
13. Far Above Rubies
14. Beauty
15. Search
16. Ramon
17. Wild Bunch
18. Ring, The (Reprise)
19. Nightfall
20. I'm Not Paying Anymore
21. Passage
22. Selling Ramon
23. Solitude
24. Chase
25. I Swam
26. You'll Know
27. Ruby, The
28. Completing the Ring

Original score composed by Lesley Barber.

Audio Mixers: Kevin Doyle; Stuart Brawley.

Liner Note Author: Boaz Yakin.

Recording information: Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA (07/1997).

Director: Boaz Yakin.

Photographer: Abbot Genser.

The soundtrack to Boaz Yakin's powerful drama A Price Above Rubies contains Lesley Barber's haunting score, which conveys the tortured emotions and anguished love in the story. ~ Rodney Batdorf, AllMusic.com

Recorded in: Orchestra Hall, Detroit 8 & 9 November 1991 (Three Essays for Orchestra), 24 & 25 April 1993 (Excerpts from Vanessa and Music for a Scene from Shelley, 16 January 1994 (Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance) Producer(s) Brian Couzens (Executive) Charles Greenwell (Three Essays for Orchestra) Ralph Couzens (Excerpts from Vanessa; Music for a Scene from Shelley and Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance) Charles Greenwell (as for Ralph Couzens) Leslie B. Dunner (Associate) Sound Engineer(s) Dan Dene Robert Shafer

BARBER: Vanessa

Barber's sophistication and elegance suggest a European composer, but his melodies and restless experimentation made him uniquely American. Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, Leontyne Price and Leonard Slatkin are heard as you behold landmark performances of Barber's Violin Concerto; Symphony No. 1; Piano Sonata; String Quartet; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra ; three versions of his famous Adagio for Strings ; the first authorized CD release of a 1935 recording of Dover Beach for baritone and string quartet (with Barber himself as baritone soloist), and more!

Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland remain among the most popular of 20th-century American composers, and the accessible, populist musical style that granted them much success with audiences is evident in this collection of their vocal works. Virgil Thomson, whose music also appears here, is less of a household name; his music, while equally (or more) conservative, has never entered the mainstream like that of his contemporaries has.
This disc is of great historical interest. All the works are heard in their premiere recordings, dating from 1950 to 1954. A young Leontyne Price gives the perfect rendition of Barber's 'Hermit Songs,' imperious, coy and despairing by turns. If Eleanor Steber lacks the naïve, wide-eyed wonder of more recent interpreters of 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915,' such as Dawn Upshaw, it is refreshing to hear a more dramatic performance that may indeed be closer to the composer's wishes. In Copland's folksy 'Old American Songs,' William Warfield sings with verve and complete authority. A special attraction here is that each composer is heard as a piano accompanist in his own works, and as an added bonus, the liner notes feature engaging reminiscences about the three composers by their younger colleague Ned Rorem.

ECHOES AND ENCORES - EVA GUSTA

Barber's aunt was the most celebrated contralto of the day, and her husband Sidney Homer wrote a number of highly successful songs. Barber explained that "writing songs just seemed a natural thing to do." Barber had a fine baritone voice, studying singing as well as composition and piano at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, Barber's instinct for vocal shaping would inform his output; half of his published compositions are vocal, and even his instrumental works frequently possess a lyrical, cantabile quality. Furthermore, Barber's partner, Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007), was also a skilful composer of vocal music, and the pair undeniably influenced one another. In 1964, Menotti argued: "There is a certain indolence towards the use of the voice today, a tendency to treat the voice instrumentally, as if composers feared that its texture is too expressive, too human". This emotive humanity is not something Barber himself shied away from; on the contrary, as both composer and lyricist he was able to cut to the heart of a subject with both concision and beauty. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers is among the best of today's young British singers. She is noted for her commanding voice and vivid personality. She has already been heard in an exceptionally wide range of repertoire including leading roles for Welsh National Opera and Oper Köln as well as concert engagements in Britain, Europe, Australia and Japan. In the 07/08 season, she made several role débuts: Gutrune in Götterdämmerung at the BBC Proms with Donald Runnicles; the title roles in Tosca at the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon and the title role in Porgy and Bess for the Basel Chamber Orchestra and the Macedonian Philharmonic. She also performed Messiaen's Harawi as part of the Southbank Centre's composer centenary celebrations 'From the Canyons to the Stars' and at the 2008 BBC Proms.