CD Review: Sonya Yoncheva’s ‘George’

George Sand is like the epitome of Parisian intellectualism: a writer, feminist, socialite, and revolutionary whose ideals resonate with compassion and societal optimism that made her an aspirational figure to the progressively oriented middle-class. Her legacy is manifold, and her alliance with spearhead musicians, including Chopin and Pauline Viardot, has greatly influenced her esteem among like-minded posterity. Sonya Yoncheva, for {…}

CD Review: Hänssler Classic’s ‘Blagoje Bersa: Lieder/Songs’

Unknown, perhaps, to a vast majority of concertgoers, Blagoje Bersa (1873-1934) ranks as a seminal figure in Croatian national musicography. His compositions, including orchestral music, opera, songs, exude all the frenzied sophistication of fin-de-siècle eclecticism that Marija Kuntaric, in her monograph on Bersa, derives “from the cantabile Italian melody, then the various masters of German Romanticism (Wagner, Mahler, R. Strauss) {…}