COMPOSERS: Brahms,Handel,Mahler,P Lieberson
LABELS: Wigmore Hall Live
ALBUM TITLE: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
WORKS: Songs by Mahler, Handel, P Lieberson & Brahms
PERFORMER: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (mezzosoprano), Roger Vignoles (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 13
The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, like those of Arleen Auger and Lucia Popp, triggered a sharp sense of loss even for those of us who never knew her personally. The ‘inner light’ mentioned in the booklet’s obituary shines as brightly in this one-hour recital as it does in her recording of Bach cantatas and her lacerating performance in the DVD of Peter Sellars’s Glyndebourne Theodora. The unique warmth of tone is sounded in the first notes even of the lighter Mahler songs. But there’s also a spiritual grace in her approach. Key tracks such as Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’; the spiritual ‘Deep river’; her fervent second encore, Brahms’s ‘Unbewegte laue Luft’ and Handel’s ‘As with rosy steps’ – where words take second place to beauty of line – place Hunt Lieberson alongside the best of Kathleen Ferrier and Dame Janet Baker, whose Mahler is matched for personality here. Husband Peter Lieberson’s songs are fascinating, too, capturing the transcendentalism of Rilke’s poetry with selective major chords worthy of Britten.
Roger Vignoles rises to the special magic of the quieter songs, though he could perhaps be more of a match for Hunt Lieberson’s incandescent assurance in delivering Mahler’s ‘Um mitternacht’ (a brief memory lapse hardly detracts from her statuesque
declamation). Otherwise, peerless. David Nice