April Fredrick – soprano
William Vann – piano
Wisconsin-born soprano April Fredrick is a soprano with a passion for nuance and text which gets to the heart of both music and character. Her first recording on the SOMM label, of Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Copland’s Eight Songs of Emily Dickinson, was described by Radio 3 CD Review as A ‘wonderfully innocent sound, fantastically clear diction and absolutely pure intonation’, Gramophone concluding that ‘not the slightest distance can be felt between her and the texts’, with MusicWeb calling her singing ‘humane and vulnerable: a beautiful voice, shining and round, celestial on the high notes and rich on the low ones…creamy timbre and velvety strength’.
April and William Vann, Artistic Director of the Pizza Express Art Song series, perform a stunning selection of some of the finest of American song, including Aaron Copland and André Previn’s settings of Emily Dickinson, Leonard Bernstein’s Two Love Songs, Dominic Argento’s settings of Virginia Woolf and songs by Charles Ives and Samuel Barber.
Programme:
Emily Dickinson settings: Nature, the gentlest Mother | There came a wind like a Bugle | The world feels dusty | Dear March, come in – Aaron Copland
Two Love Songs – Leonard Bernstein
From the Diary of Virginia Woolf: The Diary | Rome | War – Dominic Argento
Three Songs of Emily Dickinson | Sallie Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid – André Previn
Sure on this shining night | A Green Lowland of Pianos | Nocturne – Samuel Barber
The Circus Band | Down East | They are There – Charles Ives