Release Date: 02 April 2013
Label: Champs Hill
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060212590565
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: Wolf
Description
RPS award winning soprano Joan Rogers is joined for Wolf's Italian Songbook by acclaimed baritone Roderick Williams, with Roger Vignoles at the piano.This new recording for Champs Hill Records was made shortly aEer their recital at Wigmore Hall, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, in April 2012. Each of the three brought sensitivity and experience to the poetry at their command, the end result being a performance of much beauty, feeling, and most welcomely for this repertoire joy." Opera BritanniaSelf-critical of being master of 'only a smallscale genre' Hugo Wolf made carefully structured collections of his songs, each a Pny drama in music. It means that his Songbooks are much more than a random collections and, as with The Italian Songbook, they represent his aVempt to make something more substanPal, to tell a bigger story, to create a kind of 'compressed opera'.Wolf, who died in 1903 following a period of insanity brought on by syphilis, described The Italian Songbook ? his last major work ? as "the most original and perfect of my compositions".Wolf sets his Italian texts, in German translaPon, with extraordinary wit and perception - in 'Mein Liebster hat zu Tische mich geladen' (My sweetheart invited me to dinner), the piano accompaniment re?ects the very poor meal, right down to the accents represenPng the chopping of very stale bread. 'Mein liebster singt' (My sweetheart is singing outside the house) incorporates the lover's serenade in the piano part - a music sounds like a Chopin Mazurka."
Tracklisting
HUCKLE/SPENCE/BROWN
Varvara Tarasova
Various
Various
Various
Van Mellaerts/Baillieu
Timothy Ridout/Ke Ma
The Schubert Ens/Soloists
