Brickner and Wór

Read my review published in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Embassies celebrate new European Union council presidency in song
Washington Post, June 18, 2011

Chopin, Songs, Elzbieta Szmytka, Marcolm Martineau

Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, its first since joining the EU, ends this month, when Poland will take over. To celebrate the event, the embassies of the two countries co-sponsored a pair of singers, one Hungarian and the other Polish, to perform at both embassies. The first of these concerts, under the auspices of the Embassy Series, was held at the Hungarian Embassy on Thursday night.

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór is already familiar from her years in Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist program. In the first half, devoted to Polish songs by Chopin and Feliks Rybicki, she showed the velvety side of her voice. As Wór has shown on the stage, she has a dramatic presence and expressive face, qualities that helped her bring across the meaning of the Polish texts she sang with such exquisite diction. The top of her voice strained slightly, the vibrato going a little wild, but the dry acoustic, something like that of a large living room, might have left her feeling exposed. [Continue reading]

Magdalena Wór (mezzo-soprano) and Szabolcs Brickner (tenor)
Embassy Series
Embassy of Hungary