This CD features works for voice and string quartet, performed by mezzo-soprano Jocelyne Fleury and the Quatuor Claudel. The title work is my setting of the mystical poem by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a luminous evocation of spiritual experience through the metaphor of physical love. The CD also contains my setting of Sappho's Invocation to Aphrodite, sung in classical Greek, as well as my transcriptions of Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder and Obradors' song 'El Vito, ' and concludes with a performance of Barber's 'Dover Beach.'
Critic Wolfgang Bottenberg, writing in the Montreal Mirror, had this to say: "Plant’s setting of this poem (Canciones del alma) succeeds in transcending limits of musical style to give articulation to experienceswhich are almost beyond the realm of language, verbal or musical...John Plant,a composer who has a significant message for our time.."
Includes texts, translations, and notes in English and French.