Let Beauty Awake (2010)

Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins has a pleasant, chamber-sized sound, and he's competently accompanied on the piano by Jerad Mosbey. But the genius shown here is not in the singing but in the selection; Hopkins picks four works, none really well known, and puts them together in a delightful program loosely linked by themes of nature and wandering. The real find is the set of Blue Mountain Ballads by Paul Bowles, better known as a fiction writer. Written in 1946 to poems by Tennessee Williams, these four little humorous ... Read More

Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins has a pleasant, chamber-sized sound, and he's competently accompanied on the piano by Jerad Mosbey. But the genius shown here is not in the singing but in the selection; Hopkins picks four works, none really well known, and puts them together in a delightful program loosely linked by themes of nature and wandering. The real find is the set of Blue Mountain Ballads by Paul Bowles, better known as a fiction writer. Written in 1946 to poems by Tennessee Williams, these four little humorous portraits would fit perfectly on a program with Copland's Old American Songs. They're accessible but far from unsubtle; sample the quite profound use of ragtime to suggest the inner defiance of the lonesome man in the song by that name, track 19. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel were written to a group of late, posthumously published poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. This early work has hints of the composer's pastoral style, and the simple rhyme schemes of Stevenson's lines... Read Less

• All

• All Copies (0)
• Choose Release (1)

Currently there are no copies available. However, our inventory changes frequently. Please check back soon or try Book Fetch.

2010, ATMA Classique UPC: 722056261524 CD See All