JoAnn Falletta Releases MAHLER Recording

JoAnn Falletta's newest CD, Mahler (arr. Schoenberg): Songs is now available (Naxos 8.573536). Falletta leads the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players, and exemplary soloists Baritone RodeRick Williams, Tenor Charles Reid and Mezzo Soprano Susan Platts in this recording of Schoenberg's arrangements of Mahler's songs, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) (arr. A. Schoenberg for voice and ensemble) and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) (arr. A. Schoenberg for voice and ensemble). The works featured on this recording are arrangements made for performance by Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances between 1918 and 1921.

The first review of the new Mahler disc is in, and it is excellent. David Denton, who was a leading champion for the re-emergence of Mahler in the 60's says: Schoenberg having performed the impossible task of making me love every note just as if I was rediscovering familiar scores, the unforced vocal lines allowing the singers to bring so much radiant beauty to the music. The outstanding baritone, RodeRick Williams, is cruel as he digs deep into the heart in the Gesellen songs of sadness; Charles Reid an heroic tenor for Das Lied, and the flutter in Susan Platts' mezzo only adds to the poignancy of The Farewell that ends the work. Gathered around JoAnn Falletta, at the Virginia Arts Festival in 2015, were a fine group of instrumentalists, and the sound is superb. Go out, buy it, and be amazed.

Falletta first collaborated with Baritone RodeRick Williams in her Naxos recording of Kenneth Fuch's Falling Man with the London Symphony Orchestra. Gramophone Magazine featured the disc in its awards issue (October 2014), stating, ....The performances are exemplary, from baritone RodeRick Williams's commanding artistry to the bold, fresh playing of the London Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta's sensitive direction.

JoAnn Falletta is the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center. A leading recording artist for Naxos, her discs have won two Grammy Awards and ten Grammy nominations. Falletta's recent Stravinsky disc marked a career milestone as her 100th recording. Upcoming Naxos discs include music by Richard Strauss and Vitezslav Novak with the Buffalo Philharmonic, and two recordings on the BPO's Beau Fleuve label. This season, Naxos and Falletta will record Kodaly and Wagner, Music from the Ring with the Buffalo Philharmonic, music of Joseph Marx with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and her fifth world premiere recording of music of Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony.

On October 8, 2016, Falletta was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining an esteemed roster that dates back to the Academy's founding in 1780, including America's founding fathers and more than two hundred fifty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.