I and Silence: Women’s Voices in American Song (CD) – Marta Fontanals-Simmons

Composers: Aaron Copland, Dominick Argento, Samuel Barber, Peter Lieberson, George Crumb
Artists: Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Lana Bode
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Delphian
CD Release Date: August 23, 2019

“Did I sing too loud?” asked Emily Dickinson in 1861, in a poem set a century later by Aaron Copland. The expectations of silence often placed on women, historically and politically, and music’s power to break through them, are the themes of this deeply personal recital by mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons and pianist Lana Bode. Their program reflects and channels the voices of female writers and musicians: Dickinson herself, Sara Teasdale and Virginia Woolf are among those whose words are set in the works brought together here, two of which – Dominick Argento’s From the Diary of Virginia Woolf and Peter Lieberson’s Rilke Songs – were written for great mezzo-sopranos of the recent past, Dame Janet Baker and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

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