Richard Danielpour has collaborated frequently with soprano Hila Plitmann, and this album features three recent works, two of which were written specifically for her. The song cycles heard here are sung in three languages central to the composer’s life. Songs of Love and Loss is in Farsi and sets the poetry of Rumi; Canti della natura, in Italian, takes sonnets attributed to Vivaldi in The Four Seasons; while Songs of My Father is set to the English poems of Danielpour’s father. Each cycle features differing instrumentation and reflects Danielpour’s long-admired compositional subtlety and refinement.

Richard Danielpour and Hila Plitmann have collaborated on no fewer than five different Naxos albums prior this one: Ancestral Voices on 857831112, Darkness in the Ancient Valley on 8559707, The Passion of Yeshua on 855988586, Toward a Season of Peace on 8559772 and String Quartet no.7 on 8559845.

Plitmann has sung many prestigious premiere performances under leading conductors. In February 2009, Plitmann was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for her 2009 performance of Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan.