Julia Lezhneva Releases ALLELUIA

Alleluia, with soprano Julia Lezhneva, was released on Decca on June 4, 2013.

Julia Lezhneva's Decca debut album is fittingly named Alleluia, as The New York Times has praised her "voice of angelic beauty." At age 23, Lezhneva has already made a lasting impression in the classical music world. Lezhneva attended the Moscow Conservatory Academic Music College for vocal studies and piano, Lezhneva continued at Cardiff International Academy of Voice. In January 2010 she made her debut at the Salzburg Mozartwoche Festival, where she performed the soprano part in Mozart's Great Mass under the direction of Marc Minkowski.

Vivaldi was an obvious choice for Lezhneva to record, as her love of the Baroque was inspired by her pre-teen discovery of Cecilia Bartoli's 1999 Vivaldi disc. Alleluia also includes Handel and Mozart, as well as the leading representative of the "galant" style, Nicola Porpora. Lezhneva chose the music for the album intrinsically. Handel's Saeviat tellus was instrumental in naming the disc, as Lezhneva explains in the liner notes, "It is a brilliant piece, a real concerto per voce, and 'concerto' initially meant 'competition', because of its extraordinary range of moods, the piece in a way finds itself between Earth and the Heavens, finally ending with a light-hearted 'Alleluia'." Vivaldi's In furore iustissimae irae is the most tragic of any motet on the album. Beginning in a C minor, the work demands vocal strength and endurance. In contrast, Porpora's In caelo stelle clare feels much more natural for Lezhneva. She says, "Porpora's music fits my voice like Chopin fits a pianist's hands. Its joy is phenomenal." Mozart's powerful Exsultate, jubilate is very familiar to Lezhneva, having performed the motet in concert and ultimately using it as inspiration to begin recording opera arias.

Alongside Lezhneva is the pioneering Il Giardino Armonico. Lezhneva had previously performed and recorded Vivaldi's opera Ottone in villa with Giovanni Antonini and the orchestra, and she immediately looked to them as partners for this disc.