Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano [Songs of Orpheus]

The songs in this collection, composed over a period of 125 years, meditate on nature and nostalgia, sex and love, the transience of the human spirit and the eternal, transformative power of art. These song cycles by Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, George Crumb and Robert Spano merge into a testament to the boundless power and fragility of love – both its radiant joys and its tender sorrows. Despite the transience and unpredictability of love, the album forces us to reflect on Rilke's bon mot that 'to love another human being is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks... The album is structured in couplets. Debussy and Spano draw on Greek antiquity, Grieg and Crumb on the magic of nature, the transience of love, life and memory. Claude Debussy's ethereal "Chansons de Bilitis" (1899) evoke a sensual, Greek fever dream, in which the swelling of love and desire takes center stage. Robert Spano's "Sonnets to Orpheus" (2020) gives voice to Rilke's enigmatic poems of the same name. Spano's setting of the songs – an intimate conversation between piano and soprano – "draws a voice from two separate strings". George Crumb's "Three Early Songs" (1947), on the other hand, are like whispered secrets, darkly colored odes to the transience of nature – the night, a flower, the wind. Grammy Prize winner Kelley O'Connor sings this varied program and is accompanied by Robert Spano at the piano.