From the radio transcript—

A lost opera by Jewish Ukranian composer Thomas de Hartmann, based on Racine’s play Esther, it is my Record of the Week.  The most ambitious adventure so far in the Thomas de Hartmann projects efforts to record his music, and they have managed to pull together a remarkable cast with Corinne Winters in mesmerising form in the title role with the Grange Festival Chorus and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by a fellow Ukrainian Kirill Karabits.  He was working from the composer’s handwritten manuscript and is obviously passionate about the piece.  It is based on the play Esther by John Racine. The genesis of the opera was Hartmann’s need to make a statement about the holocaust in the 1940’s while he was living in occupied France.  Through the biblical story of the orphaned Jewish girl who becomes Queen and reverses a decree to annihilate all the Jews in the kingdom.  Well in the opera’s first scene we are in Esther’s palace as she tells her childhood friend Elise, how she became Queen even through the King doesn’t know she is Jewish and the chorus of the Jewish maidens lament the loss of Jerusalem.

It’s a remarkable project and a captivating recording I think framing some excellent orchestral playing and as you heard some beautiful choral laments. Corinne Winters masters a hugely challenging role and this feels like an important discovery – a wartime link between late romantic opera and 20^th Century modernism. It’s on the PENTATONE label, 2CD’s and it’s my Record of the Week.