While I Dream - Barbara Bonney, soprano with Antonio Pappano, piano
Universal - #470289 rel. February 5, 2024

This is in a sense a "cross-over" CD. Soprano Barbara Bonney uses her radiant voice to great effect as she crosses over into the traditionally male territory of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love). * Schumann's song cycle (of poems by Heinrich Heine) paraphrases both the rapture and the desperation he felt during his courtship of Clara Wieck, the talented woman composer who happily later became his wife. How did Barbara Bonney get away with it? By imagining herself to be "the woman to whom the poems were addressed."

Dichterliebe* is paired with an exquisite collection of Franz Liszt's French and German songs (based on poems by Victor Hugo, Friedrich von Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goether, and Heinrich Heine). Liszt's reputation as a piano virtuoso and a composer of works for piano overlays most everything else he did in music. Barbara Bonney beautifully demonstrates that Liszt is also a formidable composer of song, and that this CD is indeed the stuff of dreams. Antonio Pappano, the young conductor of the Royal Opera House, is her masterful collaborator at the piano.

the CD

*Click here for an account of Dichterliebe by a baritone (Matthias Goerne).

Click on a title below to listen to a music clip (Real Player required - download now):

Oh! quand je dors (Tr 1) from a poem by Victor Hugo set to music by Franz Liszt

Im wundershonen monat Mai (Tr 13) from Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann based on a poem by Heinrich Heine

Ein Jungling liebt ein Madchen (Tr 23) from Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann based on a poem by Heinrich Heine