December Songs

Carnegie Hall Commission

    Scroll down to hear three selections from the new Victoria Clark Voice & Orchestra Recording! - View On Amazon

Vicki Clark’s prodigious performance of the December Songs, accompanied by a 37 piece orchestra conducted by Ted Sperling and orchestrated by Larry Hochman, is now released on the PS Classics Label. In his liner notes Matthew Gurewitsch writes “In a new musical introduction, expanded to eleven bars, we plunge into a maelstrom that is noir yet Technicolor, music fit for Alfred Hitchcock, or Das Lied von der Erde. Get set to jump to your feet, cheering!”

For its Centennial Year celebration, Carnegie Hall commissioned Yeston to compose this series of new songs for the noted cabaret artist Andrea Marcovicci, to be premiered on their Weill Hall stage. Having taught the great Schubert lieder for many years as a Yale professor he had been inspired by Schubert’s great masterpiece song cycle - Die Winterreise (A Winter’s Journey).

That sequence of twenty songs tells the story of a young jilted man of the 19th century wandering the snows of the Vienna woods and descending into madness. Inspired by the Schubert tale and in keeping with the history of the numerous styles of music that had graced the Carnegie Hall stage for 100 years (classical, jazz, cabaret, folk, rock, musical theater etc.), this new Yeston song cycle portrays instead a brokenhearted young woman of the modern age wandering the snowy paths of Central Park. In this contemporary musical portrayal of her journey, she finds the strength to recover and begin her life anew. First recorded by Marcovicci accompanied by piano, December Songs has been additionally recorded, accompanied by numerous different chamber ensembles, six times in English, as well as in French, German, and Polish. (Click on the PRODUCTS link above to find many of these recordings, or see below on this page. To request performance materials go here: CONCORD THEATRICALS.

Listen

December Snow with Victoria Clark

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

By the River with Victoria Clark

Recordings

December Songs - Edyta Krzemien

In Polish

Edyta Krzemien’s Poznan concert performance of OPOWIESEI ZIMOWE.

December Songs - Isabelle Georges

In French & English

Isabelle Georges: December Songs, From her Parisian performance (Audio CD)

December Songs - Andrea Marcovicci

Written for and Sung by Andrea Marcovicci (Audio CD )

December Songs - Pia Douwes

DEZEMBERLIEDER

IN GERMAN (Audio CD)

December Songs - Victoria Clark

For Voice and Orchestra

Vicki Clark and a 37 Piece Orchestra, conducted by Ted Sperling

December Songs - Harolyn Blackwell

Harolyn Blackwell: Strange Hurt, December Songs (Audio CD)

December Songs - Laura Osnes

Laura Osnes: If I Tell You, Songs of Maury Yeston (Audio CD)

Print

December Songs - Piano/Vocal

Maury Yeston - December Songs: Voice and Piano (Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook)