CD Review | Breathe (Deutsche Grammophon, 2024)

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Breathe
Hera Hyesang Park, soprano; Emily D’Angelo, mezzo-soprano; Giovanni Battista Fabris, violin; Federico Romano, cello; Seulji Kim, zither; Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice; Jochen Rieder, conductor
Deutsche Grammophon, 2024

South Korean soprano Hera Hyesang Park, runner-up – and Audience Prize winner – at the 2015 Concours de Musique International de Montréal, returns with her second album, Breathe, released by Deutsche Grammophon. Her first album, I am Hera, demonstrated the highly personal tone of her musical choices. Here, she chooses to combine the old and the new, from classics by Rossini, Verdi, Massenet and Delibes to works by contemporary composers, notably Canadian Cecilia Livingston.

Recorded in Genoa, Italy, with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Carlo Felice, conducted by Jochen Rieder, this album opens with an ethereal piece by Luke Howard. The music’s gentle, soaring character gives way quite naturally to a vocal beauty and fullness that position the performer in the spotlight. From the second movement of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, we move on to the majestic breadth of Carl Orff’s In trutina, and then to a romantic duet from Hansel and Gretel, sung here with Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, also a former CMIM prizewinner. The transition between each piece is very well thought-out, and the charm of Park’s crystalline voice is guaranteed to impress.

The intertwining of the two soprano voices in the central movement of Livingston’s Breathe Alone, a work the singer herself premièred at Carnegie Hall in March 2023, offers us another moment of beauty. Everything points to this being a duet with herself, thanks to the magic of studio recording. The second half of the album seems more lyrical, more dramatic too, thanks to the repertoire selection. The voice adapts to this change of tone, becoming more fleshed-out, vibrant and virtuosic, but not necessarily more emotional.