Ruxandra Donose: The Songs of Nicolae Bretan | Nimbus NI5809

Ruxandra Donose: The Songs of Nicolae Bretan

£13.78

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Label: Nimbus

Cat No: NI5809

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 1st October 2007

Contents

Artists

Ruxandra Donose (mezzo-soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)

Artists

Ruxandra Donose (mezzo-soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)

About

Among the most renowned of her generation, Romanian mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose has captured critical and popular acclaim in leading opera houses and concert halls. Her voice has been described as an "incredibly exciting, flowing mezzo-soprano, which has no breaks and a flawless timbre." Her expressive vocalism, thoughtful musicianship, and elegant stage presence allow her to pursue an extensive operatic and orchestral repertoire.

Beginning with the Vienna State Opera, engagements led her all over the world, working with conductors such Claudio Abbado, Sergiu Celibidache, Seiji Osawa, Zubin Mehta, Christoph von Dohnany, Mariss Jansson, Vladimir Jurowsky and many others. It is with great passion that she approaches the lied, and this collection of Romanian songs by singer, poet and composer Bretan is the occasion to combine her many vocal colours, with the savour and melody of her own language.

The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specialises in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading vocal and instrumental artists, both in recital and on disc.

Nicolae Bretan (1887 - 1968) was a Romanian opera composer, a baritone, conductor and critic. He studied in Cluj, Vienna and Budapest before becoming one of the pioneers of Romanian opera. That the name Bretan is hardly known internationally was due to the Communist Regime that, in 1948, marked the composer as a "non person". His works belong to the best of Romanian Operas.

Bretan’s operas, and above all his monumental folk epic Horia, can perhaps be seen as his main body of work; and yet it is a song that runs like a connecting thread through his entire creative life. Whereas the operas were largely written during the time of his activity at the two theatres in Cluj, the composition of songs occupied him from his youth until the late years of his life.

Bretan, who discovered his passion for singing very early and began to cultivate his voice, felt just as early the urge to express himself in songs of his own, to give musical form to his feelings. Although he availed himself of poems in various different languages for that purpose, his own language seems to have been music, and his true home the realm of tones. With the title “My Lieder-Land” and the motto “We do not always belong to the land in which our cradle rocked, and therefore we are often searching for our true fatherland,” from Théophile Gautier, which he placed before his collected songs, he himself confirmed that song was consciously a central manifestation of his life and work.

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