Fauré: Nell, Op. 18 No. 1

The title work on this disc ‘Do You Dream in Color?’ is both a personal memoir and a celebration of the human spirit: an emotional, probing dramatic text that explores the nature of blindness and of human perception.

Laurie Rubin's remarkable debut disc includes songs sung in four languages. She sings in English, Spanish, French, accompanied by the excellent Marija Stroke, and completes her recital in Hebrew, performing with brilliant composer/pianist Noam Sivan.

This program of French song marks the solo debut recording of the brilliant young soprano Susanna Phillips. Ms. Phillips was the recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 Beverly Sills Artist Award, and appeared at the Met last season as Pamina in Julie Taymor’s production of The Magic Flute, and as Musetta in La bohème.

Though he professed not to enjoy concert giving, Grainger was one of the greatest pianists of the earlier twentieth century and had an intimate understanding of the capabilities of the piano and how best to write for it. He possessed a unique compositional voice and was, in many ways, part of the great composer–pianist tradition stretching from Liszt to Busoni for whom the concert transcription was an essential part of their art.

This recording contains the majority of Grainger’s concert transcriptions of music by other composers (his few Bach arrangements are performed by Piers Lane on Bach Piano Transcriptions Volume 3). They range from the folk-inspired Irish Dances of Stanford, full of Grainger’s characteristically extrovert piano writing, to the hyper-romantic lushness and incredible pianistic sophistication of his Ramble on Love based on Richard Strauss’s ‘Rosenkavalier’. All are superbly played by Piers Lane.

This CD features a particular type of French song. All the "romances" were written after 1830 and include songs by Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Fauré, Hahn and Poulenc. The Belgian bass-baritone Werner van Mechelen is a highly versatile artist and is particularly drawn to the lied genre.

At his first Salzburg recital on 18th August 1959, the legendary Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, accompanied by Erik Werba, triumphed in front of an enthusiastic audience. He endeared himself with his fluent command of four languages and with singing that was radiant in every register. The varied programme brought together compositions from Falconieri to Respighi and from Glinka to Shostakovich.