A live recording of a Wigmore Hall recital by the world’s leading contralto Ewa Podles has been released on the Wigmore Hall Live label, whose catalogue includes such famous artists as Dame Margaret Price with Geoffrey Parsons, Peter Schreier with András Schiff and Dame Felicity Lott with Graham Johnson.
The programme of Podles’ recital, recorded at Wigmore Hall in January 2008, includes songs by Chopin, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Musorgsky.
Accompanying Podleś is the distinguished American pianist Garrick Ohlsson. The CD also features his solo performance of Szymanowski’s Masques. The periodical ‘Opera Now’ wrote in its review that his interpretation ‘was a mastery display of sustained and imaginative virtuosity, matching the singer’s’.
The critic described Podles as ‘one of the world’s most impressive and individual voices, […] a voice that thrills, from a mezzo-soprano top to rich, earthy, baritonal depths…It was not just a matter of the sound but of her ability to tailor the richness, the colours, the weight to the words of the songs’.
Last year, Ewa Podles returned to the Metropolitan Opera House after a lapse of twenty-four years.
A graduate of the Music Academy in Warsaw, she is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions including those in Athens, Geneva, Moscow (the Tchaikovsky Competition), Rio de Janeiro, Toulouse and Barcelona. In the genre of opera, she is a familiar figure in the leading opera houses of the world, such as La Scala, the Covent Garden, Opéra Bastille, La Fenice, Deutsche Oper and Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin.
As a concert singer, she has appeared in many prestigious venues including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Symphony, Salle Pleyel, Salle Gaveau, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Victoria Hall and the Alice Tully Hall. Her recent awards include the Dora mavore Moore 2002 for the role of Julius Ceasar in Handel’s opera (produced by the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto).
Ewa Podleś has a substantial catalogue of recordings, which includes Krzysztof Penderecki’s Te Deum, under the composer’s baton (EMI), Mélodies Russes with the pianist Graham Johnson (Forlane), awarded the Grand Prix de l‘Académie Française du Disque; Rossini’s Tancredi under Alberto Zedda (Naxos), nominated for a Grammy Award (1996), Recital of Rossini’s arias (Naxos), the American Critics Choice Award (1997); Gluck’s Armide and Handel’s Ariodante with Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski (Deutsche Grammophon), Diapason d’Or (1998) and Chopin’s Songs with the pianist Garrick Ohlsson (Arabesque). (mk)