William Bolcom - Canciones de Lorca; Prometheus (René Barbera; Carl St. Clair)

Information

Composer: William Bolcom

• Canciones de Lorca
• Prometheus

René Barbera, tenor

Jeffrey Biegel, piano

Pacific Chorale

Pacific Symphony Orchestra

Carl St. Clair, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.559788

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Review

Striking contemporary songs and choral work with orchestra make for a compelling musical experience.

William Bolcom (b. 1938) is an extremely prolific and skilled composer, winning a Pulitzer Prize and several GRAMMY Awards over the course of his career. Naxos has offered this disc aimed at contemporary music lovers, and in terms of the music and the recording it’s a highly worthwhile purchase.

First off is a piece based on the poetry of Frederico Garcia Lorca who died in 1936, the Canciones de Lorca, composed in 2006. Originally written for Placido Domingo, the poems are sung in the original Spanish by tenor Rene Barbera, accompanied by the Pacific Symphony. These are fine performances, and the liner notes provide an English translation, but I listened without the notes first and really enjoyed the performance. The mood of the poems is varied, from whimsical to mysterious.

The second work is Prometheus, written by Bolcom in 2009 for chorus, piano (Jeffrey Biegel) and orchestra. It is sung in English, and is an epic work, based on the famous poem by Lord Byron (1788-1824). It is a sizzlingly good recording, with excellent balance of chorus, piano and orchestra.

This isn’t a program for casual listening. I sat back in a darkened room and cranked up the volume and found both compositions satisfying and in places thrilling. Even though this was not a high resolution recording, this CD sounded just fine, with realistic rendering of voices and instruments.

The Pacific Chorale and Orchestra played faultlessly, and the producers of this recording captured these performances in a very realistic way.

Bolcom is always interesting, and these two works will please lovers of contemporary music. Prometheus is the highlight of the disc to my ear, but the entire disc is beyond reproach musically and technically.

-- Mel Martin, Audiophile Audition

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William Bolcom (born May 26, 1938 in Seattle, Washington) is an American composer and pianist. He studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, with Leland Smith at Stanford University, and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. Bolcom has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. As a pianist, Bolcom has performed and recorded frequently with Joan Morris, whom he married in 1975.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bolcom

https://www.williambolcom.com/

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René Barbera is a Mexican-American tenor.

https://renebarbera.com/

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Carl St. Clair (born June 5, 1952 in Hochheim, Texas) is an American conductor. He studied conducting with Gustav Meier at the University of Michigan and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. St. Clair was music director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra (Michigan) from 1985 to 1992, and of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra (Ithaca, New York) from 1986 to 1991. In Europe, St. Clair was the principal guest conductor of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart from 1998 to 2004. On September 13, 2013, St. Clair was appointed Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_St._Clair

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