Reviews

Songs by Women

"Soprano Susan Gonzalez flaunts her delightful voice with highly idiomatic songs composed by four women ... Joyce Hope Suskind's Six Songs to Poetry of Yeats is beautifully classical in approach, painting the poet's words in an embellished tonal context. Calling to mind the lieder of Schubert, Ruth Schonthal's Early Songs are not neo-Romanic per se, rather the writing seems to literally turn back the clock, as if they were composed, without cynicism, in an idealistic past. Elisenda Fábregas also inhabits a graceful and tuneful environment with her Five Songs for Soprano and Piano. Full of flourishing accompaniment figures and incautious melodies, the collection ends with Elizabeth R. Austin's vibrant A Birthday Bouquet." Randy Nordschow, NewMusicBox, American Music Center.

"Suskind's music is filled with the delightful and unexpected harmonies one encounters in Dohnanyi and Korngold. Despite their recent composition, these songs are thoroughly tonal, but without any of the anachronism or blandness of certain "neoromantic" composers.... The [very early] Schonthal songs are very beautiful, but many composers were writing in a similar idiom. Far from old-fashioned, they sound similar to contemporary work by Barber, Copland, and Diamond. They have a curiously American feel, which is odd considering they were written by a German immigrant to Mexico." Boyer, American Record Guide.