Artist (s):
Joan Rodgers
Roderick Williams
Roger Vignoles
RPS award-winning soprano Joan Rogers is Joined for Wolf's Italian Songbook by acclaimed baritone Roderick Williams, starring Roger Vignoles at the piano.
This new recording for Champs Hill Records was made shortly after their recital at Wigmore Hall, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, in April 2012. Each of the three brought sensitivity and experience to the poetry at their command, the end result being a performance of much beauty, feeling, and most welcomely for this repertoire joy. Opera Britannia
Self-critical of being a master of only a small-scale genre Hugo Wolf's carefully structured collections of his songs, each a tiny drama in music. It means that its Songbooks are much more than a random collection and, as with the Italian Songbook, they are making an effort to make it more substantial, to create a child of compressed opera .
Wolf, who died in 1903 following a period of insanity brought on by syphilis, described The Italian Songbook - his last major work - as "the most original and perfect of my compositions".
Sets in My lover has invited me to dinner , the piano accompaniment reflects the very poor meal, right down to the accents representing the chopping of very stale bread. LiebMy sweetest sings incorporates the lover s serenade in the piano part a music sounds like a Chopin Mazurka.
