Zamuszko / Igras-Sawicka / Silesian Philharmonic - European in Mexiko / Divertimento in Memoriam - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

SOMM RECORDINGS is pleased to announce Dreams Melting, a revealing survey of British songs from the early 20th century by tenor James Geer and pianist Ronald Woodley. At the recital's heart are two substantial cycles. Setting seven poems by Thomas Hardy, Gerald Finzi's Till Earth Outwears provides an intimate and movingly melancholic commentary in what Ronald Woodley describes in his extensive and informative booklet notes as a Inchmale perspective on life, love and lossInch. Rarely recorded, Howard Ferguson's five-part treatment of Denton Welch's poems, Discovery, typifies Inchthe subtlety of the relationship between late romanticism, modernism and the inherited idioms of 'Britishness' that composers of Ferguson's generation inevitably grew up withInch. It's second song, 'Dreams Melting', provides the recital's title. Three songs make their first appearance on disc. Elizabeth Maconchy's setting of John Donne's passionate but tortured A Hymn to God the Father boasts a searching vocal line underpinned by tellingly interrogative piano. Phyllis Tate's The Falcon is a sparse but powerful setting of an anonymous medieval text while her variegated treatment of William Blake's poem Cradle Song is reminiscent of a Bartók folksong arrangement. Also heard are Maconchy's Four Shakespeare Songs and settings of Ben Jonson's Have You Seen but a Bright Lily Grow? and Robert Herrick's A Meditation for his Mistress, alongside six varied and vital songs by Rebecca Clarke, including The Seal Man, Inchone of her most soaring flights of imaginationInch, and Tate's Epitaph, in which her Inchquietly understated writing is masterlyInch.

Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra - Szabelski Gorecki Knapik Works for Orch [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/19/2012

This special recording of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart under Georges Prêtre comprises two symphonic poems by Richard Strauss and his Rosenkavalier-Suite Op. 59. Richard Strauss was a pioneer in the genre of the tone poem. The tone poems that he wrote are still considered to be the high point of program music. He extended the boundaries of program music and took the concept of realism in music to an unprecedented level. He widened the expressive range of music, while depicting subjects many times thought unsuitable for musical depiction. French conductor Georges Pretre made his Paris debut at the Opera-Comique conducting the work of Richard Strauss, no doubt creating a special place in Pretre's heart for Strauss's music. This album is part of a new re- series (Century Classics) consisting of SWR music bestsellers. The series is competitively priced, optically highly attractive and contains acclaimed SWR recordings mostly of the SWR orchestras and their chief conductors.