Rachmaninov: 6 Songs, Op. 38

The song recital recorded here brings together five composers of vastly different persuasions. Ives, the inspired maverick, the first composer who captured the "feel" of America in music; Weill, who began life composing important "classical" scores and spent the last ten years of his life writing for movies and Broadway; Rachmaninoff, whose piano concerti and symphonies are known the world over; Strauss, Germany's last all-around genius; and Hugo Wolf, the only one among the five who devoted himself to song, to the exclusion of almost everything else. This recording was made early in Dawn Upshaw’s career after she took the First Prize of the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Vocal Competition. Since then she has performed all over the world in works from Mozart to Messiaen, on both the opera and concert stage. She has championed contemporary music, giving first performances of over 25 works in the last decade. She has made over 50 recordings and won 4 Grammys.

Alternating the roles of soloist and accompanist,Alexander Melnikov has brought together here two works emblematic of Rachmaninov at his creative peak, before it was brutally interrupted by the sound and the fury of 1917: the famous Études-tableaux Op.39 and Six Poems Op.38 were followed by a very long silence. In 1931, it was a broken man who produced the Variations on a Theme by Corelli, a bitter work that yearns for a past long gone.

The coloratura soprano Elena Brilova studied with Nina Dorliac at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1985 she won first prize at the international singing competition in Holland and has since sung at the Bolshoi, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Düsseldorf from 1998 to 2005 and in Japan, China,Taiwan and Israel. She has worked with Alexander Melnikov for many years, exploring the Russian song repertoire from Glinka to Shostakovich.

Alexander Melnikov’s CDs for harmonia mundi include a Scriabin recital and acclaimed collaborations with Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Since 2002 he has taught at the RNCM.