'If You Love For Beauty' showcases Metropolitan Opera and Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and the Colburn Orchestra conducted by Yehuda Gilad.

The recording includes Mahler’s 'Rückert-Lieder', the aria Am I in Your Light? from Doctor Atomic by John Adams, Chausson’s sweeping Poème de l'amour et de la mer, all with full orchestra, and two Handel arias, Scherza infida and Ombra mai fu performed with chamber orchestra.  The members of the Colburn Orchestra create a distinct orchestral sound (a great one), and Maestro Gilad elicits sensitive and lyrical interpretations of the repertoire.  

This recording won the Audio Oasis Award even before it was released, at 'The Show' in Newport, 2012:
"combining as she did the outward purity of a Renaissance angel and a voice of powerful sensual warmth and excellent musicality" - Anne Midgette, The New York Times

"gifted young mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, as Kitty Oppenheimer, was able to create a fresh, vital portrayal, bringing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance, and a flair for seduction" - Alex Ross, The New Yorker

"sung with aching, wistful intensity" - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

"has a thrilling, dramatic voice that matches the color of her luxuriant dark red hair, and the empathetic ability to live inside these poems and articulate their variegated emotional shadings"- Lloyd Schwartz, The Phoenix