A Few Words about Chekhov - Songs & Cycles of Dominick Argen
Bridge Records
CD
$16.99Jan 03, 2025
The composer Dominick Argento wrote that he would "like for the listener to be reminded of their own humanity. I want an emotional reaction, anywhere from joy to despair... something that reminds us that we're human." The sets of songs and cycles included in this brilliant recording all speak to this artistic goal and include settings of Olga and Anton Chekhov, Petrarch, Walt Whitman, Walter de la Mare, Alun Lewis, and Argento himself. Mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala, baritone Jesse Blumberg and pianists Martin Katz and JJ Pena join forces to present this tribute to a great American composer.
A slipcase containing four 1CDs and a 2CD with archive recordings of the SWR which go as far back as 1952. The recordings belong to some of the greatest singers of all times, the repertoire consists of art songs (lied), arias and baroque arias.
Rossini: Liederabend (Art Song Evening) 1992 / Horne, Katz
SWR
CD
$6.99$13.99Save 50%Apr 30, 2013
Although Marilyn Horne was 58 years old at the time of this concert, no weakness clouded the beauty of her voice. Among the recordings over the course of Horne's career, there are many Rossini operas. This all-Rossini program shows that she could convincingly dominate the smaller forms as well.
REVIEW:
Little needs be said about Marilyn Horne, one of the greatest singers of all time, with a highly distinctive voice, immediately recognizable and colorful, a deep sense of musicality, and a vocal technique that is awe-inspiring. No ornamentation, no roulade, no trill, not the longest phrase, were beyond her phenomenal breath control. Add to this her almost magical personality.
Liederabend does need a word of explanation. The Liederbands (Liederabenden) were an extensive series of vocal recitals (over 60 years) performed at the Schwetzingen South- West Radio (Germany) Festivals. For all its touting as a Liederabend Horne’s program is all-Italian, all-Rossini (a Horne specialty). 19 songs, early and late, familiar and unfamiliar; all musical delights. Among the better known are ‘La pastorella’, ‘Bolero’, ‘La molinara’, the arias ‘Cruda sorte!’ (Italiana in Algeri and ‘Di tanti palpiti’ Tancredi. A few from ‘Sins of my Old Age’ are included.
Here is a great singer at the top of her form with most entertaining music. No texts, but a biography of Horne and a history of the Festival are included.
Besides her Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Frederica von Stade also enjoyed repeated successes in Salzburg with her song recitals. In 1986, accompanied by Martin Katz, she offered a programme that knew no boundaries, ranging from the florid poesy of settings by Fauré and Strauss to Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, the moderate American Modernism of Charles Ives, Copland and Pasatieri, then to Canteloube's French folk song adaptations. Schoenberg's early cabaret songs served to round off the evening in ebullient fashion.
