Sony Music is delighted to announce the release of the debut CD by young British mezzo-soprano, Frances Bourne.
Her eagerly-anticipated album of songs by Britten, Martinu and Weill includes many premiere recordings. Frances Bourne studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and The Royal Academy of Music, and has performed with many leading conductors, including Harry Christophers, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Emmanuelle Haim, Sir Neville Marriner and Trevor Pinnock. She has appeared with several leading UK orchestras and in oratorio and opera performances nationwide. Recent and up-coming performance highlights include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Roméo et Juliette and Hansel & Gretel for Opera North; The Cunning Little Vixen at Grange Park and numerous song recitals.
For her debut solo album Ms. Bourne has chosen to record several songs by Kurt Weill in their more unusual French language versions. These translations were known to and approved by the composer and are juxtaposed here with songs originally written in French by Weill. Having sourced the Weill French language cabaret songs, Ms Bourne set about choosing complimentary repertoire for her debut disc and alighted on previously unrecorded settings of Britten’s Cabaret Songs, arranged by Daryl Runswick for voice and cabaret band. To complete the CD, she then selected the Trois Chansons Pour Cabaret Red Seven, written in Czech by Martinu in 1921, just prior to his extended stay in Paris.
“A young British singer asserts her identity in an impressive debut. James Holmes is her idiomatic pianist in six songs (including three by Martinu - new to me) on the theme of lust, which he composed for Prague's underground cabaret club the Red Seven. In this group Bourne really comes into her own as an interpreter, both in terms of understanding the songs and in terms of demonstrating her technical prowess in their more operatic moments.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2009
“Bourne's pristine tone and clipped delivery sound deliciously 1930s…the accompaniments, shared between pianist James Holmes and the Matrix Ensemble under Robert Ziegler, are impeccably stylish.” The Guardian, 10th April 2009 ***
