Joyce DiDonato, Julius Drake - Songs Of Faure, Hanh & Head / Arias By Rossini And Handel (2006)

Man, BBC Records turned this one around fast! Wigmore Hall Live: Joyce DiDonato reproduces a live Wigmore Hall recital given only January 16, 2006, and the disc is available to the public in August of the same year. Usually even with live recordings it takes longer than that for a release to surface, but BBC apparently put Wigmore Hall Live: Joyce DiDonato on the fast track, and it's a good one. Soprano Joyce DiDonato and accompanist Julius Drake program a collection of 17 songs under the rubric "A Journey through Venice," featuring works by Rossini, Michael Head, Gabriel Fauré, and Reynaldo Hahn. As encores, operatic arias by Handel and Rossini are proffered, which are received with ebullient enthusiasm by the barely restrained English audience, who are at one point unable to refrain from breaking out into applause between songs in a set.
Michael Head is certainly an unfamiliar name, especially to listeners on the Western side of the Atlantic Ocean. However, DiDonato makes an excellent case for his art songs, emphasizing their simplicity and directness and providing a welcome oasis of linguistic familiarity in a program otherwise devoted to romance languages -- that is, if you are an English speaker! DiDonato's interpretation of Fauré's gentle "Green" is luscious stuff; floating effortlessly downward like the traversal of a leaf in the fall. This is a long program, and in Fauré's "À Clymène" is heard the only part of the program where DiDonato's enthusiasm begins to flag a bit, but she picks herself up and sounds just fine from Hahn until the end. Likewise, Julius Drake's accompaniment is only a little tangled up in the first encore, Handel's "Cara speme" from Giulio Cesare. Otherwise, this is a practically perfect live recital, which is recorded warmly, and a bit distant, but one only need to turn it up a bit to join in the fun.