A welcome addition to the catalog of Saint-Saëns' chamber music, this disc presents four of his pieces for violin and piano in a balanced and satisfying program. Violinist Ulf Wallin and pianist Roland Pöntinen have a sympathetic feeling for Saint-Saëns that shines through their polished performances, particularly in the two sonatas – works of such interest and vitality that it is inexplicable that they are infrequently performed and recorded. In its pensive lyricism and effervescent virtuosity, the Violin Sonata No. 1 shows the influences of Brahms and Mendelssohn. Wallin gives full bow to the long, noble melodies in the first two movements, and delivers the brilliant scherzo and finale with verve.

Artist's Choice: Lucinda Williams Review by William Tilland
Lucinda Williams is really an ideal candidate for Hear Music's Artist's Choice, and this collection has to be one of the strongest in the entire series. In her own work, Williams offers a winning and sometimes complex combination of passion, perfectionist tendencies, and poetic intelligence. Similarly, her 16 eclectic choices on this disc provide the same overall balance of wit, charm, craft, and passion, with different qualities predominating from song to song and artist to artist. While many of the participants in the Artist's Choice series choose to reintroduce us to old standards which were a part of their early creative development, Williams brings a connoisseur's ear to her assignment, and while she pays homage to a few artist from earlier decades, she selects nothing prior to the '60s (with the exception of Chet Baker's version of "My Funny Valentine," which she heard in her parents' home when she was growing up).

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A new opportunity to hear the glorious virtuosity of Roberta Invernizzi comes with this Lamentationi, where the soprano is joined by Franco Pavan’s Laboratorio ’600 in an intimate and intense Passiontide score from mid seventeenth-century Siena: Alessandro Della Ciaia’s set of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Convents throughout Siena at the time boasted nuns of considerable musical talents, both in singing and in playing instruments such as the organ, lute and theorbo, and it is undoubtedly for one such convent that the nobleman Della Ciaia wrote his music for the Holy Weeks matins services. His Lamentations are scored for a solo soprano possessed of a very wide range and capable of meeting his demanding technical effects.

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