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1. | Let All My Life Be Music | | |
2. | Sing To My Heart A Song | | |
3. | Let My Song Fill Your Heart | | |
4. | Love Is My Reason For Living | | |
5. | Someday My Heart Will Awake | | |
6. | I'll See You Again | | |
7. | We'll Gather Lilacs | | |
8. | Bird Songs At Eventide | | |
9. | Homing | | |
10. | I Love Life | | |
11. | The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise | | |
12. | Roses Of Picardy | | |
13. | I'll Be Seeing You | | |
14. | Serenade | | |
15. | Love Me Tonight | | |
16. | Be My Love | | |
17. | The Desert Song | | |
18. | I'll Follow My Secret Heart | | |
With his 1999 Met triumph as Tristan--the most taxing of all Wagner's tenor roles--Canadian singer Ben Heppner has fully earned his heralded position as the great new Heldentenor of our time. His Lohengrin is a signature role, while his album German Romantic Opera has been nominated for a Grammy. Yet Heppner also commands tremendous versatility--and of a much more engaging character than that of the typical crossover effort--using his powerful, bronze-tinged tenor to tender and charming effect in My Secret Heart. This is a collection of songs roughly from the period between the two world wars, when music began to reach mass audiences via radio and screen. Many of these are almost forgotten gems--emblems of a vanished era--but once had wide cultural currency: the World War II hit 'We'll Gather Lilacs,' the radio show Family Hour's theme tune 'Let My Song Fill Your Heart,' and the oft-recorded 1919 ballad 'The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise.' Heppner, with his sturdy beauty of tone and sweet, natural-sounding vibrato, breathes new life into this genre. He handles the idiom's unabashed schmaltz with charm and brings a lilting urbanity to two Noël Coward tunes, with especially bittersweet refinement in 'I'll Follow My Secret Heart.'