For this recording of Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder, Joyce DiDonato is joined by the original instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro and Maxim Emelyanychev. "Bring that innocent, childlike sense of wonder to your craft, and do whatever you need to find that truth again. It will continually teach you how to be present, how to be alive, and how to let go. Therein lies not only your artistic freedom, but your personal freedom as well!"

World famous mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and conductor-pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin join forces to take on one of the most brilliant song cycles ever written: Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey). DiDonato, however, casts a different light on this beloved cycle of 24 songs in telling their story from the perspective of the woman, the lost love. Nancy Plum, Town Topics writes: “The question of what happened to the woman who sent the narrator on a tortuous journey was not answered in the Wilhelm Müller poetry from which Schubert drew the text, but DiDonato created a scenario onstage of being that woman, reading from the narrator’s journal and responding to the inherent despair.” “What stood out was the heavy emotion that came through in her singing, as she lingered on a syllable here, pressed her tone there. She created vivid feelings with her contrasts” wrote New York Classical Review about Joyce Didonato’s interpretation.

"EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots. It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us, to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being. It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn't perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within." - Joyce DiDonato

With her flexible, slender but dark-timbred mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato is the star guest at Sir Simon Rattle’s side during the New Year’s Eve Concert, singing Richard Strauss’s lavishly beautiful orchestral songs. The programme also includes works by Dvořák, Stravinsky, Bernstein and Shostakovich and will create the perfect atmosphere for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.