Songs & Structures

Harold Meltzer's new recording presents recent vocal and chamber works, and features Metropolitan Opera tenor, Paul Appleby, who is also the recording's annotator. Appleby writes: "(Meltzer's) literary imagination and text-setting skills are sophisticated and technically accomplished. More than illuminating discrete words or phrases within a text, Meltzer possesses the Schubertian quality of casting his distinct reading of a whole text in concise, colorful and precisely articulated harmony." Harold Meltzer is inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on it's American Classics label, was named one of the Albums of the year in The New York Times. In December 2017 Open G Records released a second recording of Harold's music, eliciting similar praise: an "enchanting and unpredictable release" (San Francisco Chronicle); "thrives on ample invention and an astute sense of color (The Wall Street Journal); "summoning up sounds from his ensemble that seem nearly impossible" (American Record Guide); "a composer fully in charge of his powers, and in his prime" (Fanfare Magazine).