Special offer. The Dark Night Has Vanished
Catriona Morison (mezzo), Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Morison’s mezzo basks in an almost inextinguishable warmth and radiance...Everywhere her sense of musical line is a wonder (pianist Malcolm Martineau conjuring wonderments of his own), though...
Special offer. The Dark Night Has Vanished
Catriona Morison (mezzo), Malcolm Martineau (piano)
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Morison’s mezzo basks in an almost inextinguishable warmth and radiance...Everywhere her sense of musical line is a wonder (pianist Malcolm Martineau conjuring wonderments of his own), though...
About
This spellbinding recital marks the Linn debut of Scottish mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison, winner of the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Main Prize and joint winner of the Song Prize. Favourites by Romantic heavyweights Brahms, Grieg and Schumann feature alongside Lieder by the German composer Josephine Lang, whose prodigious songwriting talent was nurtured by none other than Felix Mendelssohn. Lang’s unpublished setting of ‘Gestern und Heute’ (Yesterday and Today) is given its world premiere performance on this recording. Her distinctive style reveals an imaginative composer with a rich harmonic palette whose significant contribution to nineteenth-century German song deserves greater recognition. Morison, who is described by The Guardian as ‘a singer of much character [and] real musical intelligence’, joins luminaries such as Florian Boesch, Ann Murray and John Mark Ainsley, all of whom have also recorded with pianist Malcolm Martineau at Crear’s ‘Space to Create’. In addition to making her debut solo recording 2019 saw Morison make her BBC Proms debut (in Elgar’s Sea Pictures) and marked the end of her appointment as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist.
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Awards and reviews
April 2021
Morison’s mezzo basks in an almost inextinguishable warmth and radiance...Everywhere her sense of musical line is a wonder (pianist Malcolm Martineau conjuring wonderments of his own), though a more nuanced engagement with the sound and colours of the German words could be desired. Riveting nonetheless.
March 2021
Though she hails from the era of Mendelssohn, Lang has a less contained, more Schumannesque manner that is used with such unfiltered conviction you would think she invented this harmonic world. Her balance of words and musical expression is effortless; her use of form is distinctively seamless. Expressive mileage that Lang draws from repeated words never feels laboured...All parties concerned – Morison, pianist Malcolm Martineau and the composer – are at their best amid the lyrical flow and emotional depths of ‘Abschied’.
The Scottish-German Cardiff winner in 2017 presents her first lieder recital on disc, six songs each by Grieg, Brahms and Lang, seven by Schumann. It's a lovely voice, limpid, delicate, instinctively musical.
26th February 2021
Hers is a voice of many colours, wielded with innate musicianship and sensitivity across its considerable range. Sometimes she’s a soaring soprano, pinging the top notes with ease; elsewhere she’s a dusky mezzo, coated in velvet. Whatever the tone, whatever the repertoire, you want to keep listening, just as you do with her pianist partner, Malcolm Martineau, masterly from the pealing first bars of Grieg’s spring song Gruss.
