The Best Of

Elina Garanca�s personal choice of her greatest tracks, released to coincide with her receiving an Echo Award (6 October) & the publication of her memoirs in December

Ten years ago she made her sensational d�but at the Salzburg Festival, singing the role of Annio in Mozart�s Clemenza di Tito. Since then Elina Garanca has become one of the greatest, most sought-after mezzo-sopranos in the world. As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, she has made four solo albums for the label, and collaborated on many CD and DVD releases.

Now, with the artist�s help, we have brought together favourite tracks from her discography � the Seguidilla and Habanera from Carmen, the Flower Duet from Lakm� (with Anna Netrebko), the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann and many more, including Annio�s aria from Clemenza di Tito, some of her great bel canto roles and the touching Lullaby (Nana) by de Falla (see tracklist).

The CD booklet includes a newly-commissioned interview with Elina, where she reflects on her career and indicates where she is headed artistically. Her complete discography is also given there.

Arabesque

In 2011 Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko showed herself an impressively versatile artist on her d�but CD, �La bellezza del canto.� On her second album, �Arabesque�, where she is accompanied by the NDR Sinfonieorchester (NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra) under the baton of Enrique Mazzola, she again casts her net wide, from sophisticated bel canto to light music. In addition to arias by Verdi, Bellini and Strauss, Ms Peretyatko, has recorded pieces by the French composers, Gounod and Bizet. Also, for the first time on disc we hear her singing Mozart, one of her favourite composers.

Her recital includes Mozart�s concert aria K. 538, �Ah se in ciel, benigne stele,� as well as Donna Anna�s dramatic coloratura aria �Crudele�non mi dir� fromDon Giovanni, and Susanna�s idyllic �Rose aria� from The Marriage of Figaro.

Ms Peretyatko�s talent for empathy, embodied in lyrical beauty or in perfectly performed high notes, can also be admired on the new CD in lesser-known pieces. For example, she sings an aria from Bizet�s symphonic cantata Vasco da Gama about the famous seafarer and explorer. And as on her first CD, Ms Peretyatko shines with a Rossini rarity: the aria of the goddess Cerere from the composer�s 1816 wedding cantata Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo. She already sang this work at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 2010.

On her new album, Ms Peretyatko also performs a bolero from Verdi�s I Vespri Siciliani, while she can be heard in the role of Elvira in two arias from Bellini�s last opera I Puritani, in which she will make her d�but at the New York City Metropolitan Opera in April 2014. Last but not least, Ms Peretyatko brings her recital to a close with evidence of her fine feeling for salon music and comic opera. As the chambermaid Adele in Strauss� Die Fledermaus she plays the innocent lass from the country. Then comes a villanella where she turns into a swallow, while in the famous romance Solovyey moy by the Russian composer Alexander Alyabyev we hear her skilfully imitating the song of a nightingale.

Les Sopranos

This special product is dedicated to the voice of soprano, the most emblematic of the lyrical art and features some of the leading sopranos from the Na�ve catalogue: Sandrine Piau, Patricia Petibon, Julia Lehneva, Felicity Lott, Karina Gauvin, V�ronique Gens and Lucy Crowe.

Mozart Opera and concert Arias

�Diana Damrau's intelligently planned and superbly executed recital� I can�t remember when I last enjoyed a Mozart recital of this kind so much.� --BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 *****

��J�r�mie Rhorer draws tangy, rhythmically lively playing from his period band. "Taste", "fire", "flexibility", "sweetness", "grace of execution" - these were the qualities especially prized in singers of Mozart's day. On this showing Damrau, like Lucia Popp before her, has them all.� --Gramophone Magazine, March 2009

Diana Damrau (soprano)
Le Cercle de l�Harmonie, J�r�mie Rhorer

In her second recording as an exclusive Virgin Classics artist Diana Damrau interprets concert and operatic arias by Mozart in a programme which displays her virtuosity and impressive vocal range.

Indeed Diana Damrau�s new recital shows she can sing practically all of Mozart�s notably varied soprano roles � ranging from the bravura (Donna Anna, Konstanze, Donna Elvira�) via the more serious (Pamina) to the lighter soprano (generally soubrette roles such as Susanna, Blonde�).

From her first recording everyone noted her outstanding Queen of the Night � here she is Pamina (in New York�s Met last Fall, Diana Damrau alternated the two roles with brio). She is also Susanna and the Contessa (Le Nozze di Figaro), Konstanze and Blonde (Die Entf�hrung), Donna Anna and Elvira (Don Giovanni), Servilia and Vitellia (La Clemenza di Tito), pairing major soprano roles within the operas, and concert arias.

As for her first recital, �Arie di bravura�, French conductor J�r�mie Rhorer, who is rapidly gaining international recognition, directs his French period-instrument ensemble Le Cercle de l�Harmonie

Handel: Il Caro Sassone

�With her vernal light lyric soprano, grace of line and vivid response to mood, Lucy Crowe proves well-nigh ideal in this conspectus of music from Handel's Italian years...Crowe's delectable singing is complemented by fresh, rhythmically buoyant and, where needed, virtuoso playing from the English Concert, who on their own give sparkling performances of three instrumental numbers from [Handel's] astonishingly fertile Italian sojourn.� --Gramophone Magazine, January 2012

�there is a marvellous flamboyance to these youthful works...Crowe is fully equal to their demands, showing an imaginative sensitivity to Handel's melodic shapes, even if a few low notes take her beyond her best range. She's alert, too, to the music's harmonic implications...Bicket proves an astute accompaniment [sic], allowing Crowe all the time she needs to turn corners...The English Concert make a fine showing, their trumpets resplendent� --BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 ****

�She has added luscious chest tones to her bright soprano in recent seasons, and consistently delights in Handel�s gloriously youthful music, which includes an early variant of the famous aria from Rinaldo, Lascia ch�io pianga. Bicket�s English Concert supplies luxury, stylish accompaniments.� --Sunday Times, 4th December 2011

�Crowe follows the young composer�s flights with musical and emotional fidelity, in tones from tender to sharply penetrating. She uses her voice with quasi-instrumental freedom, but also with the kind of micro-inflection that the voice can make so much more potent and heart-piercing than any instrument. Harry Bicket and the players of the English Concert are hand-in-glove partners to the vocal wizardry.� --Irish Times, 16th December 2011 ****

�With this recital, Crowe cements her star status in the Baroque world. Her technique is dazzling (hearing her diminuendo and crescendo on a high A in a trumpet-and-drums aria from La Resurrezione is a joy in itself), her voice is pure and fresh, and she's a natural communicator...this is a fascinating and beautifully performed portrait of a genius composer flexing his wings.� --Classic FM Magazine, February 2012 ****

Susan Gritton Sings Britten, Finzi, Delius

�Gritton's performance [of Les illuminations) is lustrous and joyous, a precociously talented young man's music brilliantly presented.� --The Guardian, 15th April 2010 ****

�...there is much to admire in [Gritton's] delicate, considered vocalism, as well as in her refined musicianship...With the BBC string players on sterling form, Finzi's haunting blend of lyricism and astringency, the bite of his harmonic scrunches and the fluid interplay of his lines...all come over.� --BBC Music Magazine, June 2010 ***

�The pleasures here are many...right from the outset one can hardly fail to be struck by the exquisite (but never self-aware) sheen of the BBC SO's response. Edward Gardner directs with the utmost sensitivity...Susan Gritton, too, sings with heartfelt empathy, radiance and intelligence, and her alliance with Gardner certainly distills the necessary tingle-factor.� --Gramophone Magazine, July 2010

One of Britain�s leading lyric sopranos, Susan Gritton here performs a unique programme of works by three English composers, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, ENO�s Musical Director.

The quintessence of Finzi, Dies natalis sets texts by the seventeenth-century poet Thomas Traherne, which reflect the joy and wonder of a newborn child�s innocent perspective on the world. The richly textured, resourceful string writing and the long melodic lines are hallmarks of Finzi�s style. The subtle inflections of the word-setting and lyricism have attracted many leading vocalists both in concert and on disc. Although particularly associated with the tenor voice, Dies natalis was premiered, and is increasingly performed by, sopranos.

This premiere recording of the version of Delius�s A Late Lark for soprano voice is currently the only available recording of the work. A setting of W.E. Henley�s poem �I.M. Margarit� Sorori�, it offers a lovely lyrical reflection of the serene acceptance of death and is especially poignant as it was one of Delius�s last works. Eric Fenby, Delius�s friend and amanuensis, recalls that one day after he had read the poem through to Delius, �and had finished playing his setting, [Delius] said, �Yes, that is how I want to go.��

Susan Gritton, who also appears on Chandos� Grammy Award� winning Paul Bunyan, here includes the Quatre Chansons fran�aises, the most significant work of Britten�s juvenilia. The songs, to texts by Verlaine and Hugo, were composed between June and August 1928 when Britten was a mere fourteen, and demonstrate the flair for instrumental colour that was to become the hallmark of the mature composer. The album is completed by the later song cycle Les Illuminations, which offers a further development in his exploration of the orchestral song cycle, a genre that he was to make very much his own during his career.

Rossini: Arias

"A natural comedienne, she combines a vivacious stage presence with graceful, finished phrasing and an apparently effortless coloratura technique . . ." Gramophone, June 2013

"She tosses off Rossini's elaborate writing with the greatest of ease. This is an impressive Rossini recital." --Classicalcdreview.com, July 2013

"Dazzling . . . Kurzak combines a warm and richly colored low register with tireless, technically precise fireworks . . . the theatrical fearlessness of her delivery and the fluidity of her phrasing throughout make this an enjoyable and deeply impressive offering." --San Francisco Chronicle, August 2013

A natural comedienne, she combines a vivacious stage presence with graceful, finished phrasing and an apparently effortless coloratura technique . . . [she is] triumphantly celebrating her erotic power in the Act 2 "Rond� e finale" from "Matilde di Shabran" . . . Without ever over-egging the pudding, Kurzak acts vividly for a "blind" audience, alive to verbal nuance and using coloratura not merely as a vote-catching circus trick, but to enhance character. Lustily abetted by the Sinfonia Varsovia, she is especially good at generating a crescendo of delirious, dizzying glee that is such a hallmark of Rossini's comic art. But this is not all about frolicsome virtuosity and bright-pinging top Ds and Es. Kurzak can find warmer, deeper . . . colourings within her silvery soprano . . . [a] tenderly sculpted performance of Amenaide's prayer in "Tancredi" . . . she rails with passionate ferocity as the banished wife in the rarely aired "Sigismondo" and catches the mingled dreaminess and excited anticipation of Semiramide's "Bel raggio lusinghier" . . . elegance of style and expressive delicacy (she always cares for the text) . . . Kurzak brilliantly caps her recital with Fiorilla's Act 2 scena from "Il turco in Italia", beginning in intense pathos and ending in coruscating bravura . . . This regularly brought the house down at Covent Garden, and on this evidence it's easy to hear why. --Record Review / Richard Wigmore, Gramophone (London) / 01. June 2013