Purcell / Crumb - Apparition | Onyx ONYX4021

Purcell / Crumb - Apparition

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Label: Onyx

Cat No: ONYX4021

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 29th October 2007

Contents

Artists

Christine Schafer (soprano)
Eric Schneider (piano/amplified piano)

Works

Crumb, George

Apparition
Early Songs (3)

Purcell, Henry

Celebrate this Festival, Z321
» VI Crown the altar, deck the shrine
Dido and Aeneas
» When I am laid in earth
Don Quixote, Z578
» From rosy bowers
If music be the food of love, Z379
Music for a while, Z583
Not all my torments can your pity move, Z400
Pausanius, the Betrayer of his Country, Z585
» Sweeter than Roses
Thrice happy lovers (An Epithalamium)
Tyrannic Love or The Royal Martyr, Z613
» Ah! how sweet it is to love

Artists

Christine Schafer (soprano)
Eric Schneider (piano/amplified piano)

About

This CD from the outstanding partnership of Christine Schäfer and Eric Schneider focuses on two song composers in the English language – the great 17th century master Henry Purcell, and the contemporary American George Crumb (b1929).

Purcell’s songs are well-known (especially Dido’s Lament) but this is only the second recording of the Crumb  – Apparition in particular is unusual for its use of a prepared piano and wordless vocalises, but is highly approachable music nonetheless.

Schäfer and Schneider have juxtaposed these composers many times in recital. Though 300 years separate them,
Schäfer finds they have much in common. Rather than a traditional ‘CD’ order for the songs ie Purcell, then Crumb, the songs are interspersed so that a story emerges. It begins with music – ‘Music for a while’ and as the ‘food of love’. Then comes a wedding, a love song and then we move towards jealousy, abandonment and death. Apparition (after poems by Walt Whitman written following the assassination of President Lincoln) presents a vision of death’s beauty. Short spoken lines from Shakespeare’s sonnets connect the songs perfectly

Schaefer is photographed in a wedding dress inside the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The “bones” were inspired by the theme of “Apparition”, the semi-translucent O-card by the title.

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