Home listening - Will Liverman; Leif Ove Andsnes, Mozart and 1785

The Guardian 0

The American baritone highlights black composers across generations; and Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra play peak Mozart

• The new album by the baritone Will Liverman, a recent Papageno at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and pianist Paul Sánchez should be obligatory listening for anyone planning a song recital, not to mention anyone wanting to expand their musical horizons. Dreams of a New Day: Songs By Black Composers (Çedille) includes a powerful new commission – Two Black Churches by Shawn E Okpebholo (b1981) – alongside existing African American art songs by eight composers past and present.

The earliest is Henry Burleigh (1866-1949), who collaborated with Dvořák during the Czech composer’s time in America. Burleigh’s Five Songs of Laurence Hope are dramatic and impassioned. So too, though stylistically different in their modernity, are the beautiful Three Dream Portraits by Margaret Bonds (1913-72). These settings of texts by Langston Hughes were written in 1959 at the height of the US civil rights movement.