A 2009 Rome Prize winner, Lisa Bielawa will release her forthcoming LP The Lay of the Love and Death, Wait and Hurry via Innova Recordings this June. The album deals with themes like the loss of innocence and that we all ultimately die young.
Perhaps the most sobering of notions, indeed, Bielawa's latest centers around a 25-minute composition that is based on the epic poem The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Having premiered at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 2006, Bielawa commented on the work:
"Perhaps the poet Rilke, suddenly aware of his own mortality, was also already aware that, although many of us continue living into more reflective, circumspect years, in a sense all of us die young, because the innocence of our young selves cannot survive the various awarenesses that are the inevitable result of a prolonged tender encounter with a troubled world."
Also on the album is Wait, a piece for piano that was premiered by pianist Evelyne Luest with members of Contrasts Quartet at New York's Merkin Concert Hall in 2002.
According to a release, Wait is the second of four related works based on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, which has been described by Bielawa as "passages of great intimacy and vulnerability." Rounding out the album, too, is a musical time piece that encapsulates the feeling Bielawa felt when reading Boris Pasternak's Hurry, My Verses.
With a premiere at Cargenie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2004, the album features performances by acclaimed musicians including baritone Jesse Blumberg; soprano Sadie Dawkins Rosales; pianists Jocelyn Dueck, Benjamin Hochman, and Evelyne Luest; violinist Colin Jacobsen; cellist Eric Jacobsen; clarinetist Anthony McGill; and flutist Lance Suzuki.
So while you await the anticipated release on June 30, get down with some Bielawa below and make sure you keep an ear to the ground for more.
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