Barnes & Noble
It was almost impossible to hear the singing of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson while she was alive without becoming viscerally, even physically moved. To listen to this posthumously released recording of the Neruda Songs -- a cycle composed for the mezzo-soprano by her husband, Peter Lieberson, and widely performed by her in the year before her untimely death in July 2006 -- is to risk something like total heartbreak. It's a risk worth taking -- arguably an essential risk, as indispensable as Hunt Lieberson's own artistry -- and the result adds richly to her all-too-small discography. The beauty of her radiant singing is matched here, superlatively, by the beauty of her husband's languidly luxurious music, with the words of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as an equally important partner. Neruda's poems are love songs of great emotional complexity, even daring to pose, with sad acceptance, the prospect of ultimate loss: "My love, if I die and you don't." Perhaps not even in her acclaimed recording of Bach cantatas -- performances that also sing of facing death without fear -- did Hunt Lieberson convey simultaneously such gravity and grace. If, on one level, the Neruda Songs were self-evidently a precious gift from husband to wife, their performance and recording is an even more priceless offering -- perhaps, sadly, the last -- from one of the great singers of our time. Scott Paulin
All Music Guide
The history of Peter Lieberson's "Neruda Songs" is so freighted with emotion that it's difficult to listen to them with any objectivity. The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote 100 Love Sonnets (1960) for Matilde Urrutia, who later became his wife, and Peter Lieberson set five of them for his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Lieberson's settings grew out of a full understanding of his wife's extraordinary vocal and dramatic gifts and are suffused with his intimate awareness of her personal and artistic vitality, as well as the fragility of her physical health. Hunt Lieberson gave the premiere of the "Neruda Songs" in Los Angeles in May 2005 and recorded them with the Boston Symphony under James Levine in November that year. She died in July 2006. The listener is always aware of the generosity of the husband and wife, composer and singer, in being allowed to participate in the intimacy of their final love song to each other.
Lieberson's musical style, which since the beginning of his relationship with Hunt Lieberson had broadened to incorporate a richer harmonic vocabulary along with a heightened awareness of the importance of melody, reaches a new level of lyric and dramatic intensity in these songs. One hesitates to use the word Romantic to describe his new musical language, because the word implies looking backward rather than moving forward. It would be more accurate to characterize Lieberson's new work as freer, less cerebral, and more open to intuition while retaining his impeccable craftsmanship, exquisitely colorful orchestration, and discerning critical ear. The vocal lines are deeply personal and inevitable expressions of the texts, with each note precisely and passionately placed, taking full advantage of the breadth of Hunt Lieberson's expressive abilities.
While the themes of several of the poems include the death of the beloved, and the fear of loss or separation, the overriding musical tone of the cycle is not tragedy, but tenderness. The final song, "My love, if I die and you don't," is a gentle exhortation not to grieve and concludes: "But Love, this love has not ended: just as it never had a birth, it has no death; it is like a long river, only changing lands, and changing lips." Lieberson ends the cycle by floating the word amor repeatedly over a tranquil orchestral murmur.
Hunt Lieberson invests the songs with heartbreaking tenderness and strength and an almost reckless emotional urgency and vulnerability and transparency. Her voice is warm and powerful, radiant from the bottom of her range to the top, and she soars on the expressive lines Lieberson gives her. In this live recording, James Levine's leadership of the Boston Symphony treats the orchestra as a sensitive and fully engaged partner in conveying the drama and poignancy of the cycle. Stephen Eddins
Gramophone
These brilliantly crafted songs deserve all the attention they can get. Ken Smith
Billboard
Hauntingly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking.... Hunt Lieberson sings with the resplendent tone and intellectual depth for which she was so justly renowned. It is a fitting close to a career -- and a life -- that ended much too soon. Anastasia Tsioulcas
Dallas Morning News
[Grade: A] These settings reach the exalted level of Das Lied von der Erde or the Four Last Songs. A year before her death, Ms. Lieberson was still in remarkable voice -- those chest tones in the fifth song are heartbreaking. Lawson Taitte
BBC Online
Simultaneously sad and uplifting, you’ll be hard pushed to find a performance to match this one for emotional intensity and ability to move the listener.... This is a 'must buy'. Charlotte Gardner
San Jose Mercury News
[Lieberson's] moonstruck voice combines rapturously with the sensual, almost tropical nature of the music and texts. Richard Scheinin
Newark Star-Ledger
Lieberson's performance of this sensual, affecting score is characteristically poetic, with every line beautifully sung and subtly felt. Bradley Bambarger
The Guardian
There is unlikely to be any more touching testament to [Hunt Lieberson's] special qualities than this cycle. Andrew Clements
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