Lorraine Hunt Lieberson – Bach Cantatas BWV 82 & 199

August 14, 2010

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Bach Cantatas

Bach Cantatas

For Classical music aficionados this album is not a surprise but it was a revelation to me.  If music is about mood this performance is about transcendence.  Charles Michener deserves all the credit for turning me on to this. He writes in his profile of LLH, “Hunt Lieberson displays no sense of self-consciousness, no striving for artistic effect. Like the best pop and jazz vocalists—Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Joni Mitchell (whom Hunt Lieberson reveres)—she seems artless, creating an atmosphere so enveloping that the listener may feel like the only other person in the world, transported to a place beyond mere words and music.”

For an in-depth profile of LLH please see Charles Michener’s superb profile The Soul Singer in the New Yorker.