William Bolcom - Canciones de Lorca; Prometheus (René Barbera; Carl St. Clair)

Information

Composer: William Bolcom

• Canciones de Lorca
• Prometheus

René Barbera, tenor

Jeffrey Biegel, piano

Pacific Chorale

Pacific Symphony Orchestra

Carl St. Clair, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: Naxos

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Review

William Bolcom (b. 1938) is an extremely prolific and skilled composer, winning a Pulitzer Prize and several GRAMMY Awards over the course of his career. Naxos has offered this disc aimed at contemporary music lovers, and in terms of the music and the recording it’s a highly worthwhile purchase.

First off is a piece based on the poetry of Frederico Garcia Lorca who died in 1936, the Canciones de Lorca, composed in 2006. Originally written for Placido Domingo, the poems are sung in the original Spanish by tenor Rene Barbera, accompanied by the Pacific Symphony. These are fine performances, and the liner notes provide an English translation, but I listened without the notes first and really enjoyed the performance. The mood of the poems is varied, from whimsical to mysterious.

The second work is Prometheus, written by Bolcom in 2009 for chorus, piano (Jeffrey Biegel) and orchestra. It is sung in English, and is an epic work, based on the famous poem by Lord Byron (1788-1824). It is a sizzlingly good recording, with excellent balance of chorus, piano and orchestra.

This isn’t a program for casual listening. I sat back in a darkened room and cranked up the volume and found both compositions satisfying and in places thrilling. Even though this was not a high resolution recording, this CD sounded just fine, with realistic rendering of voices and instruments.

The Pacific Chorale and Orchestra played faultlessly, and the producers of this recording captured these performances in a very realistic way.

Bolcom is always interesting, and these two works will please lovers of contemporary music. Prometheus is the highlight of the disc to my ear, but the entire disc is beyond reproach musically and technically.

— Mel Martin

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William Bolcom (born 26 May 1938) is an American composer and pianist known for bridging popular and classical music traditions. Educated at the University of Washington, Mills College, the Paris Conservatory and Stanford University, he later served as professor of composition at the University of Michigan. A prolific composer, Bolcom wrote works across genres, including piano études, operas, orchestral music and song cycles, and showed a particular affinity for ragtime. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and multiple Grammy Awards in 2006. Bolcom has also been active as a performer, writer, editor and educator.

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René Barbera is a Mexican-American tenor and alumnus of San Francisco Opera's Merola Opera Program and the Ryan Opera Center in Chicago. In 2011, he became the only singer to win all three top prizes at the Plácido Domingo Operalia Competition. He has appeared in leading bel canto roles at major opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Bayerische Staatsoper. His repertoire features works by Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi, with notable roles such as Count Almaviva, Don Ramiro, Ernesto, Alfredo Germont and Nemorino.

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Carl St. Clair (born June 5, 1952 in Hochheim, Texas) is an American conductor. He attended the University of Texas and later studied conducting with Gustav Meier at the University of Michigan and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. He has been Music Director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra (1985–92), the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra (1986–91), and the Pacific Symphony since 1990. In Europe, St. Clair was the principal guest conductor of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart from 1998 to 2004, as well as Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatskapelle Weimar (2005–08) and the Komische Oper Berlin (2000–10).

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