A Little Miracle

Elizabeth Shamash, mezzo-soprano; Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Gerard Schwarz

For years I’ve been a big fan of the chamber music of Pittsburgh-based David Stock, and I think his violin concerto is one of American music’s best kept secrets. (Please, someone, release a commercial recording of it.) But I’d never heard a note of his vocal music until the arrival of this disc, the centerpiece of which is a dramatic cantata composed in 1997 relating a miraculous first-person Holocaust survival account. Over the course of 30 minutes, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Shamash portrays three different characters and sings convincingly in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew as a result of Stock’s extremely idiomatic prosody. Another well-kept secret!

—FJO