Natalia Prass

Natalie Labourdette (soprano) and Victoria Guerrero (piano) make up an internationally award-winning art song duo that has released its debut CD on GENUIN. The tracklist includes 20th-century vocal music based around the experience of "la petite mort", as the French language refers to the climax of lovemaking. This is an existential experience, the desire to "linger", deep loneliness, and happy union! Alban Berg, Gabriel Faur, Samuel Barber, and other great composers of classical modernism created miniature masterpieces and the two young musicians dedicate themselves to this repertoire with a great sense of tonal color and interpretive clarity!

Live Classics’ Natalia Gutman “Portrait” series continues with a second volume documenting the cellist’s work from her early career up to the present. A 1967 German radio broadcast of the Debussy Cello Sonata stands out for Gutman’s warm, expansive tone and strong, fluid support from pianist Alexei Nassedkin. A few moments of uncertain intonation and less-than-centered articulation in the second movement’s opening pizzicatos are a small price to pay for fine overall ensemble values. Gutman shines in the declamatory, slow-motion passages that dominate the outer movements of Schnittke’s First Cello Sonata, and throws herself head first into the central Presto’s roller-coaster arpeggios and ruthless clusters. A gripping performance, this: every bit as authoritative as Alexander Ivashkin’s with the composer’s widow Irina Scnittke at the piano. She’s a more sensitive colorist than Gutman’s solid yet comparatively monochrome Vassily Lobanov.

This album consists of material that she is, mostly, the songwriter, that makes echoes to the music and spirit of Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk and Janis Joplin. Recorded in studio in live conditions, Soulblazz favors warmth of acoustic instruments. The twelve songs successful highlight the spirituality of the soul, the intensity of blues and jazz aesthetics for which the singer injected energy roots rock.