Opus Arte to release album commemorating Susan Chilcott – hear an excerpt!

On September 2, Opus Arte are to release ‘The Shining River’, a disc dedicated to the late soprano Susan Chilcott - 10 years following her death from breast cancer at the age of 40. The album will feature a number of previously unheard recordings from a live recital given in 2001 at La Monnaie in Brussels, and Copland songs from the final recording before her death (Black Box, 2002).

Included on the new album are Copland’s Old American Songs and 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson, Britten’s Calypso, Berlioz’s La Mort d’Ophélie, Vaughan Williams’s Orpheus with his Lute, and Richard Strauss’s Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulieb vor andern nun?. Chilcott’s accompanist throughout the recording is pianist Iain Burnside.

The project has received the support of a number of high-profile artists, including conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, who writes of the recording:

‘It is one of my great personal disappointments that I never had the chance to collaborate with Susan Chilcott in a lieder recital. Her talent was complex – she was someone who needed to reach out to her audience, almost pleading with her emotions, as well as someone who could draw the audience to her with her subtlety, nuance and colour. Her keen relationship to the words, allied to a gorgeous, creamy voice, made her a most fascinating performer. In the end communication is everything, and in this regard Sue was supreme. I conducted her for 10 years (more likely she conducted me!); those experiences remain unforgettable to me. This recording is a celebration of her unique spirit, voice and heart, and I am thrilled it is now being issued. Susan Chilcott lives!’

Hear an excerpt from Copland's The Little Horses performed live by Susan Chilcott and Iain Burnside on the Gramophone Player below: