Rilke Songs, The Six Realms (Violoncello and Orchestra), Horn Concerto (review)

Winner of the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Recording and Grammy nominee for Best Classical Album, this Bridge recording prominently features an astonishing eighteen-minute live performance of Peter Lieberson's five Rilke Songs sung by its dedicatee the late mezzo-soprano Loraine Hunt Lieberson with the pianist Peter Serkin. Their performance was recorded at the 2004 Ravinia Festival. The concertos that accompany this centerpiece were recorded in Danish studios with Justin Brown conducting The Six Realms in 2003 and Donald Palma the Horn Concerto in 2005.

All three pieces reflect the substantial changes in Lieberson's compositional style that occurred after 1997 when he first met Lorraine Hunt, whom he later married. At the time she was singing one of the principal roles in the Santa Fe Opera's premiere of his opera, Ashoka's Dream. Through their extended conversations and working relationship that summer, Lieberson learned about the complexity of the human voice and the multitude of subtle intricacies of which it is capable. Most important for his future music, she became his muse and changed the direction of his compositional style.

Much as Robert Schumann's love for Clara Wieck inspired him to compose in a genre he had previously disregarded, after meeting Hunt, Lieberson immediately turned to songs after the Santa Fe Chamber Music Society requested a commission. He selected five poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus in their original German settings, texts that became prophetic for the couple. Like Robert and Clara Schumann, who were struck by the tragedy of the German composer's deteriorating mental health, as a newly married couple Lieberson and Hunt were struck by the diagnosis of her breast cancer in 1999. She tragically succumbed to the disease at age fifty-two in the summer of 2006, increasing the significance of this work. In addition to being exceptionally difficult both rhythmically and musically, the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding the work have resulted in singers perceiving it to be "off limits." Hunt Lieberson gave Rilke Songs their definitive performances, leading singers to view them as belonging to her. Further performances might be considered disrespectful to her memory.

Lieberson composed Rilke Songs between 1997 and 2001. Before the entire group of songs was complete, Hunt Lieberson performed "O, ihr Zärtlichen" and "Stiller Freund" with pianist, Robert Vignoles, in a recital at London's Wigmore Hall, November 30, 1998. The BBC recorded the performance, which was issued on compact disc on the Wigmore Hall Live label (catalog number WHLIVE 0013). Hunt Lieberson and pianist Judith Gordon unveiled the entire work at the 2001 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Lieberson grouped his five chosen texts elegantly, with the imagery flowing from one song to the next. The cycle pivots around the middle song, "Wolle die Wandlung." His understanding of the voice is quite apparent throughout his careful text setting, which enhances Rilke'e enigmatic atmosphere. Most of the text is set syllabically; words are seldom repeated. When not exceedingly angular, melodies are often marked by ascending chromatic lines. Most significant for Lieberson at this time was certainly his recent awareness of the importance of melodic line and how it carries "not just the form of the piece, but the heart of the piece" (http://www.newmusicbox.org). Melodic line was to become the driving force in all his subsequent compositions. The composer's harmonic language, marked by chromaticism, is reminiscent of Berg's Das Buch des hängenden Gärten, songs of Alma Mahler, and works by Francis Poulenc.

Playing an independent, yet supportive role that never becomes overpowering or too harmonically thick, the piano part shares equally with the voice in conveying the various layers of the texts' meaning. Frequently doubling the vocal line, the piano's lines are...