GLINKA: Complete Songs and Romances

GLINKA: Complete Songs and Romances, Volume One (DE 3338)

Delos' previously issued series of songs and and romances by great Russian composers have included the complete songs of Prokofiev on three discs, four of the five installments of the songs of Shostakovich, a one-disc survey of the songs of Borodin, and now, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, the first installment of the complete songs and romances of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka. Recognized as the founding father of the Russian school of music, Glinka managed in his lifetime — 1804–1856 — to compose seminal Russian operas, much orchestral music and enough songs to fill three CDs. This first installment covers the period 1840–1856 in which Glinka composed many of his best works (27 of them) set to verses by poets as distinguished as Pushkin, Lermontov, and Goethe. As song connoisseurs have come to expect in these Delos series, the master arranger and pianist is the formidably talented Yuri Serov. The vocalists, sensitively chosen by Serov, include soprano Victoria Evtodieva, mezzo-soprano Liudmila Shkirtil, bass Piotr Migunov, and on one track the male group of the LEGE ARTIS Chamber Choir.

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