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See: Deborah York – Short Biography

Recommending Deborah York

Joan M. Thomas wrote (July 29, 2003):
Recently, I picked up a disk of Johann Kuhnau's sacred works--(HYP 67059)--in which Deborah York is one of the soloists, and it has shot up fairly close to the top of my Desert Island list. It is one of the volumes of the "Bach's Contemporaries" series which Robert King is putting out on the Hyperion label, and i,, who am so often disappointed due to what seems to me a lack of expressiveness in many of the sopranos featured in the more recent recordings of the cantata cycles, can recomment this disk highly.

I, too, like Arlene Augér very much indeed! I have the Rilling BWV 51, and find her performance there quite astonishing, especially in the first two movements. However, I have only heard her in Bach and Mozart recordings. With your comments in mind, I shall certainly look about me in an effort to discover other things. One of my newer acquisitions is the compilation disk from Hänssler of her singing arias from a number of the cantatas. To me, her aria from BWV 105, underscored with the solo oboe, is so moving that it actually hurts the heart to listen--and yet, one waits, with joy, to be wounded afresh at the next hearing.

With regard to other Ameling recordings, there is a quite wonderful LP of German Renaissance Christmas music that came out, courtesy of Musical Heritage Soceity, in the very early '70's. Elly Ameling is one of a quartet of singers, and the accompaniment consists of a consort of viols, tenor and soprano records, and one of those big lutes. Ravishing! Unfortunately, so far as I know, it has never been reissued on CD, but you may, at some point, find someone who has it and can give you access to it.

Bob Henderson wrote (July 29, 2003):
[To Joan M. Thomas] Deborah York is the marvelously characterful Soprano I in McCreesh's recent OPP SMP even as Ameling can be found as soloist in the 1977 recording of the same work by Somary, the Ambrosian Singers and the English Chamber Orchestra. Never issued in CD I think. Just for your information.

Deborah York: Short Biography | General Discussions