[ Naxos / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 1 July 2011
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Vocal music comprised around a quarter of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu's extensive output, no fewer than 27 songs dating from 1912 alone, and much of it remaining unpublished during his lifetime.
Many of these set texts drawn from Czech folk sources and poetry, though old Spanish, German, English and French poetry - sometimes translated into Czech - are also to be found. While echoes of Brahms, Dvorák and Schubert may be heard, Martinu's own style emerges surprisingly early in his career.
Young Czech mezzo-soprano Jana Wallingerová, praised as 'splendid' (Der Neue Merker) and for her 'full voice brimming with feeling' and 'brilliant technique' (Hospodárˇské noviny), joins pianist Giorgio Koukl, whose Naxos recordings of Martinu's piano music have gained the highest praise.
"a first-class and very generous collection...when the songs are as beautifully and often movingly sung as they are here by Jana Wallingerova, and the piano accompaniments - a pleasure in themselves - are so felicitously and sensitively played by Giorgio Koukl, this CD affords much enjoyment...All in all, this is a most rewarding disc, throwing new light on its composer. It is very well recorded, too." Gramophone
6 Simple Songs, H.110
Lullabies, H.146bis
2 Small Songs In Folk Idiom, H.14
2 Songs On Russian Poetry, H.135bis
3 Goethelieder, H.94
The Gnat's Wedding, H.75
3 Children's Songs, H.146
Dead Love, H.44
Czech Riddles, H.277bis
2 Songs, H.31
Walk, I Walk Among The Hills, H.74bis
How Dear To Me The Hour, H.106
Blissfulness, H.81
Tears, H.41
Mood Drawing, H.29
A Song Of 1st November, H.72
A Girl's Dreams, H.22
When We Are Both Old, H.10
Before You Know It, H.6
Night After Night In Dreams I See You, H.57
3 Songs On French Texts, H.88: No. 3 Night
Life's Over For Me, H.43
At Night, H.30
Old Song, H.74
Song On An Old Spanish Text, H.87
A Song About Kissing, H.27bis
I Know A Nice Green Grove, H.273