Customer Reviews

Modern American Vocal Works - Barber, Copland, Thomson

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This CD should be in every music lover's collection. If you are even remotely interested in American art song, this disc is for you. To have singers performing works with the composers at the piano is priceless. Steber's Knoxville is perfection. Do not pass up the chance to hear all of these incredible singers in their prime, singing works which oftentimes were written for them. It does not get any more definitive than this.

What a fantastic re-release! To hear not only Price, Warfield, Steber, and Tourel in their prime, but the composers at the piano rendering definitive interpretations of thiese master works...well, the experience is priceless. This is one of the best recordings, and most treasured, in my entire collection!

Though I'm not a huge fan of vocal music, this is one of my very favorite of over 1,200 CDs in my collection. It's a lovely collection, with no weak spot. Eleanor Steber in the first recording of Knoxville 1915 is magnificent, and I can never listen to anyone else do Copland's Old American Songs after hearing William Warfield's rendition here. The real finds here, though, are the Thomson works: Stabat Mater is brief but haunting and memorable, and Capital Capitals is inventive and hilarious. In this company, the young Leontyne Price in Barber's Hermit Songs is almost beside the point. I cannot recommend this CD highly enough.