Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni is currently appearing as Basilio in The Barber of Seville at the COC. On Tuesday he gave a noon hour recital in the RBA accompanied by Hyejin Kwon. There were two halves to the programme; Schubert’s Schwanengesang D.957 and a set of six Italian songs by Francesco Paolo Tosti.
Despite having seen Pisaroni live twice before in recital I’d never heard him sing German Lieder so the Schubert was especially interesting. It was good. He can be as dramatic or as lyrical as he needs to be with quite a range of dynamics and colour. “Der Atlas” was powerful and emphatic while “Das Fischermädchen” was really rather lovely. “Der Doppelgänger” was very controlled with any temptation to over sing it resiosted. I also noted some really interesting piano playing in “Die Stadt”. Continue reading
George is a new CD from soprano Sonya Yoncheva and friends made up of music George Sand would have listened to and some readings fro her works. There’s a particular emphasis on Pauline Viardot; close friend of Sand and sister of Maria Malibran.
Cantilena is a CD of art songs by various composers arranged for soprano, harp and cello. It’s an interesting twist on music that one is likely to be fairly (sometimes very) familiar with in the usual voice and piano format. It’s a generous disk with nineteen songs in all. The composers featured are Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Massenet, Tosti, Tedeschi, Richard Strauss, Gregory and Villa-Lobos. The performers are soprano Gillian Zammit, harpist Britt Arend and cellist Frank Camilleri. Arend and Camilleri are principals with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.
operaramblings 