George Crumb Vol. 17 - American Songbook VI; Idyll for the Misbegotten; The Sleeper
BRIDGE 9445

Voices From The Morning Of The Earth: A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, East and West (2008) is the sixth of seven American Songbooks that occupied George Crumb for most of the millennium’s opening decade. This recording (Volume 17 of Bridge's Crumb Edition) completes Bridge's cycle of Crumb's American Songbooks. The seven songbooks are approximately five hours in length, and constitute George Crumb's magnum opus. Also on this CD is Crumb's Idyll for the Misbegotten. The composer writes that “flute and drum are to me those instruments which most powerfully evoke the voice of nature. I have suggested that ideally (even if impractically) my Idyll should be “heard from afar, over a lake, on a moonlit evening in August.” The Sleeper with words by Edgar Allan Poe, transforms Poe's lugubrious meditation on a dead beloved (“Soft may the worms about her creep!”) into a haunting ode to a woman slumbering beneath the “mystic moon.” George Crumb's complete American Songbook series can be heard on these CDs: BRIDGE 9413 (American Songbook VII); BRIDGE 9335 (American Songbook V); BRIDGE 9275A/B (American Songbooks II & IV); and BRIDGE 9218A/B (American Songbooks I & III).

Reviews:

“Another important addition to the Bridge Records’ George Crumb edition.” - WTJU91.1FM

“The Sleeper, a setting of Edgar Allan Poe for soprano (originally Jan DeGaetani) and prepared piano, superbly performed by Ann Crumb and Marcantonio Barone, is rich with eerie sounds and whisperings, conjuring a world that is uniquely Crumb's.” - BBC Music Magazine

“These are well known songs sung in the original but with Crumb’s delicate, mostly metallic percussion arrangements in a ghostly, otherworld character that sets them into a mystical timelessness.” - Performing Arts Monterey Bay

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PDF Booklet

George Crumb, composer

Voices from the Morning of the Earth
(A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, and East and West (2008)
(American Songbook VI)
Ann Crumb, soprano
Randall Scarlata, baritone
Orchestra 2001
James Freeman, conductor

An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Images III) (1986)
Rachel Rudich, flute
David Colson, Paul Herrick, A.J. Matthews, percussion

The Sleeper (1984)
Ann Crumb, soprano
Marcantonio Barone, piano

BRIDGE 9445

Related discs:

9476, 9413, 9335, 9312, 9275, 9261, 9253, 9218A/B, 9174, 9170, 9155, 9139, 9127, 9113, 9105, 9095, 9069, 9028