Alma – Ibero-American Songs
Julieth Lozano Rolong (soprano)
João Araújo (piano)
rec. 2024, The Stoller Hall, Manchester, UK
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0706 [54]
Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong and Portuguese pianist João Araújo began their partnership while studying at the Royal College of Music and are clearly in the top drawer of artists in their field. Julieth won the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Audience Prize in the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was recently named one of Opera Wire’s Top Ten Rising Stars, while João was awarded best collaborative pianist prizes at the Concours Musical International de Montréal in Canada and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, and he has been nominated for the Gerald Moore Award. We are assuredly in safe hands here.
Ibero-American art songs turn out to be a neglected part of their genre, and this recording is the result of these musicians shared passion for these works. The programme is divided into seven countries, but this turns out to be less important than the nice sense of contrast and flow that makes listening to the CD in one sitting such a delight.
Julieth’s voice is a sparkling soprano in range but can take on a haze and a darkness that gives expressive depth to a song such as the title track, Alma mía (My Soul), by María Grever, whom we are told was the first Mexican female composer to gain international success. All texts are given in their original language and in English translation in the booklet, so you can easily follow how this singer builds from an intimate confiding at the opening’s ‘horrible aching’, towards the dream of how they would feel ‘through just a kiss’, all over a subtly simple setting with the piano in French salon-music mode.
Emotively dolorous texts such as this contrast well with songs such a Brazilian composer Waldemar Henrique’s lively Uirapuru or Musical Wren, which describes the non-stop energy of a chatterbox boatman. This whole recital is a treasure-trove of surprising gems, from Ernani Braga’s patter-song-like Engenho novo or Song of the sugar mill workers, that pushes the singer’s breath to its limits, placed ahead of María de Pablos’ La noria (The Water Wheel). This, with its impressionistic descriptive elements and wide-ranging narrative, is like a three-and-a-half-minute opera in its own right.
All of these songs are excellent and everyone will find their own favourites, but I love Luis Carlos Figueroa’s Promesas para que duermas (Promises So You Can Sleep), which is another one of those pieces that creates its own immersive world in miniature, as does the gentle breeze blowing through Os salgueiros or The Willows as set by Luis Costa from Portugal. The closing song is by António Fragoso, who was a victim of the 1918 influenza epidemic; Embalando o menino or Cradling the Little Boy, a tender and deeply poignant song but ultimately one filled with hope.
This is one of those song-recital recordings that can easily convert those who think they are not keen on song-recital recordings. Julieth Lozano Rolong’s voice is one you can listen to endlessly without feeling you are missing the smallest expressive nuance, while also noting an effortless virtuosity that is always there in service of the music. The recording is very good, the piano not quite projecting into the ambience of Stoller Hall in Manchester in the same way as the voice, but nicely balanced nonetheless.
Dominy Clements
Contents
Carlos Guastavino (1912–2000)
Milonga de dos hermanos
Gilardo Gilardi (1889–1963)
Canción de cuna india
María Grever (1885–1951)
Alma mía
Te quiero dijiste
Waldemar Henrique (1905–1995)
Uirapuru
Jayme Ovalle (1894–1955)
Azulão, Op.21
Ernani Braga (1888–1948)
From: Canções nordestinas do folclore brasileiro
1. Ó Kinimbá (Canção afro-brasileira de macumba)
5. Engenho novo (Canção de trabalhadores
de engenhos de açúcar)
María de Pablos (1904–1990)
From: Seis canciones
1. La noria
Ernesto Halffter (1905–1989)
after Alexandre Rey Colaço (1854–1928)
From: Seis canciones portuguesas
2. Ai que linda moça
Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
From: Canciones españolas antiguas
5. Las morillas de Jaén
8. Nana de Sevilla
Fernando Obradors (1897–1945)
From: Canciones clásicas españolas, vol.3
6. El vito
Joaquín Valverde Sanjuán (1875–1918)
Clavelitos
Modesta Bor (1926–1998)
Canción de cuna para dormir a Albertico
Rojo
Luis Carlos Figueroa (b.1923)
br Promesas para que duermas
Jaime León Ferro (1921–2015)
Rima
La campesina
Pedro Morales Pino (1863–1926)
Cuatro preguntas
Luiz Costa (1879–1960)
From: Três canções, Op.7
1. Os salgueiros
António Fragoso (1897–1918)
Embalando o menino
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