Walton: The Complete Façades
ARTISTS: JoAnn Falletta (Conductor); Hila Plitmann (Narrator); Fred Child (Narrator); Kevin Deas (Narrator); Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra
COMPOSER: William Walton
LABEL: Naxos
CAT ID: 8.574378 (747313437870)
GRAMMY® CATEGORIES SUBMITTED INTO:
Classical Compendium
Engineered Album, Classical (Bernd Gottinger)
Producer of the Year, Classical (Bernd Gottinger)
Edith Sitwell’s invitation to William Walton to collaborate on an innovative, revolutionary new work came at a critical moment in the young composer’s career, and Façade proved to be his first great success. The peerless combination of a peculiarly English dry wit, genuine pathos and superlative technical skill remains an extraordinary achievement. Sitwell’s verses conjure a satirical and poignant world of bourgeois late-Victorian England, while Walton’s settings unfailingly enhance and enrich the texts in a work in which words and music are unquestionably of equal importance.
Performers
Photo Credit: Heather Bellini
JoAnn Falletta
GRAMMY Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and music director laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She has guest conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in America, Canada and throughout Europe, Asia and South America. As music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble. Credited with bringing the Philharmonic to an unprecedented level of national and international prominence, she is a leading recording artist for Naxos, and won her most recent GRAMMY Award in 2019 as conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for Kenneth Fuchs’ Spiritualist (8.559824). Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (8.559331) received two GRAMMY Awards in 2008. From 2011 to 2014 she served as principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, with whom she made her BBC Proms debut and recorded six highly acclaimed Naxos albums. She was the first woman and the first American to fill this post. Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served as a member of the National Council on the Arts, is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards and was named Performance Today’s Classical Woman of the Year 2019.
For more information, visit www.joannfalletta.com.
Hila Plitmann
Two-time GRAMMY Award-winning soprano, songwriter, and actress Hila Plitmann is known for opera, concert, film, and theatre performances filled with emotionally charged fearlessness, unique expressivity, and mesmerising drama. A frequent soloist on major stages across the world, she’s widely recognized as one of today’s foremost interpreters of contemporary music, as well as traditional repertoire, and boundary-pushing projects in non-classical genres. With prolific jazz guitarist Shea Welsh and tabla virtuoso Aditya Kalyanpur she recently co-founded Renaissance Heart, a global music project melding classical, jazz, folk, rock and world music.
For more information, please visit: www.hilaplitmann.com
Fred Child
Since 2000, Fred Child has served as host of APM’s Performance Today, the most popular classical music radio show in America. He is also the commentator and announcer for Live from Lincoln Center. Child hosts musical events on stages around the United States, working with major orchestras and festivals. Beyond the world of classical music, Child has hosted NPR’s innovative Creators at Carnegie, a programme of wide-ranging performers in concert. Prior to NPR, he served as music director and director of cultural programming for WNYC. He has been a contributor to Billboard magazine and served as a concert host and commentator for BBC Radio 3.
Kevin Deas
Bass-baritone Kevin Deas is a graduate of The Juilliard School. He is much in demand performing symphonic concert works, oratorio and opera, with his diverse repertoire spanning Baroque to contemporary pieces. He has been engaged by conductors including JoAnn Falletta, Zubin Mehta, Sir Georg Solti, Lorin Maazel, Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop. Deas has performed multiple times with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago, San Francisco, St Louis, Montreal and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and various other orchestras. He serves on the performance faculty as lecturer at Princeton University.
Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players
Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in Southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from across the globe. Renowned artists who have performed at the festival include Itzhak Perlman, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Olga Kern, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Miami String Quartet, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Stewart Copeland, Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Patti LuPone, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre and Mark Morris Dance Group. The festival has presented numerous world premieres and new productions of classical music, dance, and theatre from some of today’s most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The festival’s arts education programmes reach tens of thousands of schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in-school performances, artist residencies, masterclasses and demonstrations. Van Cilburn gold medallist Olga Kern serves as the Virginia Arts Festival
Connie and Marc Jacobson Director of Chamber Music. Each season concerts from the festival chamber music series are broadcast nationwide on American Public Radio’s Performance Today.
For more information, please visit: https://www.vafest.org
.
Press
“Five stars: A bold new version of these poems, richly characterized. JoAnn Falletta is to be congratulated for bringing us Walton’s revisit of the piece.“
Fanfare Magazine
“While there have been a number of fine recordings of Façade, this one takes the blue ribbon. The combination of three superlative narrators, a spot-on musical ensemble plus JoAnn Falletta’s matchless conducting and the customary top-notch sound and packaging from Naxos makes this what I predict will be the ‘go-to’ recording of the Façade music for years to come.
There’s written and musical genius at work here!”
Raymond Jones, Host/Producer, WHRO Classical FM
“The Façade spoken texts are nimbly accompanied here by the virtuosic Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra with the excellent JoAnn Falletta conducting. The precision of the words’ alignment with the notes is phenomenal.”
EarRelevant.net
“JoAnn Falletta leads musicians from the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber orchestra in a peerless performance that’s light on its feet, perfectly capturing Walton and Sitwell’s unique collaboration that puts equal emphasis on his music and her words. Hila Plitmann, Fred Child and Kevin Deas make for a compelling trio of narrators. CD Release of the Week.”
The Flip Side Blog
“The percussive delivery reflected in the instrumental music can be raucous and fast or gentle and slow, all in a continuous flow. This bright, clear, new recording is entertaining and enthralling. Highly recommended!”
Artsong Update
“It is all quite marvelous.”
Infodad.com
“While JoAnn is adept at music from all periods, music of the twentieth century is really in her wheelhouse. Her deft and spirited conducting carries the day through both sets of Facades plus four additional numbers not usually heard, adding up to nearly an hour of great musical fun and panache.”
Raymond Jones, Host/Producer, WHRO Classical FM
“This disc represents what may well be considered the “last word” on Façade; some of the music heard here has not been previously recorded.”
EarRelevant.net
“The special charm of this release is to be found in the acting skills of the narrators. Falletta realized that Sitwell’s poems contain actual characters who could be brought vividly to life, and she has chosen her cast well. Hila Plitman is extremely versatile, sounding at times Russian or German in her delivery (she is actually Israeli). Fred Child is a vocally nimble PBS narrator, and well-regarded bass-baritone Kevin Deas comes across richly with an arch demeanor suggestive of the childlike nature of some of the poems. The result is extremely satisfying.”
Fanfare Magazine
“From the cheeky energy of the opening fanfare, full of brio and clarion brass, to the “Last Galop”, this is one of the most vividly pictorial chamber works one could encounter.”
EarRelevant.net
“Façade is very much a work of its time, and it is also one that has very much transcended its time. It is unique, one of a kind, and quite impossible to categorize. But it is not impossible to perform with aplomb, and that is what the forces under JoAnn Falletta do.”
Infodad.com
“In these precisely timed performances, the narrators include operatic soprano Hila Plitmann, radio host Fred Child, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas. All are excellent, exhibiting their own personal styles but always with the words exactly aligned to the music.”
EarRelevant.net
“JoAnn Falletta and her Virginians play with sass and spark.”
Fanfare Magazine