Ewa Podles - Ewa Podles & Garrick Ohlsson Live - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

After the signal event that was World War I, gifted young composers trooped into the French metropolis full of hope. In 1925, the Michel Dillard coined the term L'École de Paris ('The Paris School') in reference to the foreign composers then living in Paris, principally the Hungarian Tibor Harsányi (1898-1954), Poland's Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), Bohuslav Martinu from Czechoslovakia (1890-1959), Russia's Alexander Tcherepnin (1899- 1977), and the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici (1898-1985), all of whose works he specialised in disseminating. These composers came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinu [and Swiss composer Conrad Beck (1901-1989)], died there. All five initially addressed the difficult task of translating their countries' folk music idioms into standard musical notation. Several works on this programme are heard in their world premier

Ewa Podles - Recital [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/27/2009

It is the successful combination of the low, chest baritone and high, head soprano registers that has come to characteristically define the rare and unique contralto singing voice at it's finest. This register combination results in a natural, three octave scale. Another specific contralto feature is a natural agility that, with professional training, becomes an overwhelming coloratura. Ewa Podles, considered the most authentic contralto of her generation, features her distinctive, dramatic and agile voice on this new Dux of well-known 18th-20th c. operatic excerpts.