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Lyrical soprano Christiane Karg confronts master poets in this gripping encounter. She shines in John Adams’ arrangement of Debussy’s Le Livre de Baudelaire, whose “Le balcon” sparkles with kaleidoscopic colors under the baton of David Afkham. Her masterful lines are the foundation around which the orchestra’s beautiful fantasies bloom.

You might gravitate toward French singers in this repertory, but to overlook this release of French Impressionist orchestral songs sung by German soprano Christiane Karg would be a serious error.