Carolyn Sampson – From 5 Continents: Choral Music & Songs (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:04 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
Somm Recordings is delighted to announce the release of an intriguing new recording, introducing the melodious, rhythmically vibrant choral music and songs of Penelope Thwaites. Featuring 19 premiere recordings, From Five Continents celebrates a lifetime of making music around the world to showcase Thwaites’ distinctive compositional signature. The disc’s centrepiece, a moving new Missa Brevis, is coupled with four Psalm settings, songs influenced by the sounds of Indian and African music, folk-styles from the Americas and an evocation of the vast Australian outback.
Read moreCarolyn Sampson, Kristian Bezuidenhout – Trennung: Songs of Separation (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:36 minutes | 2,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
This is a well conceived album that has clearly been subject to a thorough editorial process. Not content with having recorded over 100 vocal pieces, soprano Carolyn Sampson is stepping away from her global limelight to join Kristian Bezuidenhout (an inconspicuous pianofortist who is nevertheless still very active in terms of recordings and concerts, whether as a soloist or with best early music ensembles of the moment). Together, they’ve created an incredibly original programme based on separation and departure songs from the 18th century, a time period when a loved one’s absence could last for a long time, if not forever. This album has provided the perfect opportunity for these two curious minds to discover delightful, unknown pieces written by gifted composers who’ve remained hidden in the folds of time. They’re the perfect accompaniment to the safe and timeless works of Mozart and Haydn.
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Carolyn Sampson, Allan Clayton, Joseph Middleton – Wolf: Italienisches Liederbuch (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:37 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse’s collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse’s translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf’s settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart.
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