With the present programme we want to explore the history of the German Lied throughout a period spanning some 800 years, from that first light of dawn represented by the earliest music scored with modern notation - courtly love songs by Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445) - down to such present-day emissaries of the Lied tradition as Aribert Reimann and Wolfgang Rihm. In between we find: J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Hensel, Wolf, Berg, and Eisler.

This box set documents Riccardo Chailly's first years as principal conductor of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. In summer 2016, he steps into the office as Claudio Abbado's successor with Mahler's 8th Symphony. In a colorful, fresh and stirring performance of the overture and incidental music to William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony, Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra bring the musical imagery of both works to life. In summer 2018, the performers transport us to Ravel's musical universes full of colors, scents and flavors: from the pulsating three-four time of the waltzes to the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chloé and the relentless rhythm of the Boléro. A recording from summer 2019 of Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony and Third Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev marks the various stages in the composer's life and demonstrates once again the close bond between the orchestra and their new principal conductor.

On her third Pentatone album Brahms Lieder, Anna Lucia Richter returns to the German lied, making her recording debut as a mezzo-soprano with a recital of Brahms songs, together with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. Brahms is particularly suitable for this recording debut as his songs fit the mezzo-soprano voice like a glove, and the pieces presented here range from love poetry and dark Romanticism to folk songs, including the world-famous Wiegenlied. Richter’s profound engagement and knowledge of the German lied is perceivable in each song she performs, as well as in her insightful liner notes text for the booklet, in which she links the project to the notion of twilight (Dämmerung). Bushakevitz’s poetic playing offers the perfect tone for both the gloomy and the idyllic pieces. Anna Lucia Richter belongs to the most exciting young singers of her generation. Brahms Lieder is the third fruit of her exclusive collaboration with Pentatone, after her Monteverdi portrait Il delirio della passione (2020) and her Schubert album Heimweh (2019). Ammiel Bushakevitz enjoys a flourishing career both as a solo pianist and lied accompanist, and makes his Pentatone debut.

REVIEW:

As a soprano her earlier Schubert album “Heimweh” was one of the most compelling song albums I’ve reviewed and I named it as one of my Critic’s Choice albums of 2020. I confess that I miss her lighter voice, but the change to mezzo allows her to use her middle range, where she is most at home. The choice of Brahms for her debut album as a mezzo confirms her decision.

I can name no album of Brahms songs I’ve enjoyed more than this. That is due partly to the selection of 20 of his best and most performed songs, including some of his folk song settings. Mostly it is because of Richter’s exemplary ability as a lieder singer. Pentatone’s sound quality is superlative.

-- American Record Guide (Robert A. Moore)

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d’Arianna, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Poppea and the Prologue of L’orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi’s music by penetrating deeply into the original sources. Their interpretation of the famous Lamento d’Arianna, salvaged fragment of the lost score of the opera L’Arianna, is exemplary in that regard. Richter’s passionate delivery is inspired by what precedes in the libretto, while Pianca has composed short, “madrigalistic” instrumental interludes between the solo sections, replacing the choral commentaries, of which only the original texts have survived. Altogether, the pieces on Il delirio della passione demonstrate Monteverdi’s exceptional skill to express the most complex emotions, in music of timeless beauty. Anna Lucia Richter belongs to the most exciting young singers of her generation. Il delirio della passione is the second fruit of her exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, after Heimweh (2018), and her last soprano recording, as she will continue her career as a mezzo-soprano. Luca Pianca and Ensemble Claudiana both make their PENTATONE debut.

REVIEW:

Some purists won’t like Luca Pianca’s approach to unwritten ornamentation, which allows the virtuoso members of the Ensemble Claudiana unbridled freedom, and some may cavil at his imaginative and at times almost cavalier attitude to instrumentation. But there is no doubting the freshness of Pianca’s interpretative stance.

Richter’s bright, clean, focused tone, precise diction and keen sense of drama will be familiar from her performances in an impressively wide-ranging portfolio, stretching from Schubert lieder to Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs, and Idomeneo to Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers.

The heart of her achievement on this recording is undoubtedly the lament from Arianna. With its sure-footed command of the patterns and cadences of the Italian language, this is a powerful reading. It is surely the only serious competition in the catalogue to Cathy Berberian’s classic performance with Nikolaus Harnoncourt from the 1970s.

– Gramophone

When the Bamberg Symphony and their principal conductor Jakub Hruša went on tour in Germany with Mahler's Fourth Symphony in January 2020, no one would have thought that this symphony in particular would become a kind of "symphony of fate" of the year, for only two months later, the performance of major symphonic works was impossible for a long time after the "corona lockdown" in Germany, which hit cultural institutions particularly hard. The Bamberg Symphony were involved at an early stage in investigating the effects of making music together on the spread of the virus and helped to develop concepts for safe concert performances. This enabled their renowned Mahler Competition to take place in early July 2020, with Mahler's Fourth Symphony at its center. Even though it is the smallest Mahler symphony, these were the first symphonic performances after months, which then led to one of the first symphonic album recordings in times of the pandemic - seated apart, but musically closer than ever.

On her PENTATONE debut album, young German star soprano Anna Lucia Richter explores the heart-wrenching, timeless and universal feeling of Heimweh (homesickness) through a collection of extraordinary Schubert songs. Richter approaches the notion of Heimweh from several perspectives: from that of queens, young girls and shepherds to that of soldiers, dwarfs and gravediggers.

The repertoire consists of the original, German-language version of Ave Maria, three Mignon songs (Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Heiss micht nicht reden and So lasst mich scheinen), the sinister Der Zwerg, the expansive flower ballad Viola and many others. Richter is accompanied by pianist Gerold Huber, with whom she has formed a congenial Lieder tandem in the last years. They are joined by clarinetist Matthias Schorn on the final song of the program, the quasi concert aria Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.

REVIEWS:

The soprano Anna Lucia Richter has recorded a CD with a running time of almost eighty-one minutes. The program consists exclusively of songs by Franz Schubert. It begins with "To the Moon" and ends with "The Shepherd on the Rock". The CD was released by Pentatone (PTC 5186 839). On the beautifully rendered cover, the young singer falls from heaven like an angel from Tintoretto. It has become customary to place song productions under a specific theme; this time, it's about homesickness. A wide field, and Schubert and his lyricists promise a rich harvest. For the foreword in the booklet, the artist even consulted Grimm's dictionary and found out that the word homesickness entered general usage at the beginning of the 18th century. And she wonders if homesickness is "not actually the desire" to find something on the outside that can actually only be created on the inside.

The lyrical titles suit her better than the ballad-like “Zwerg”, in which the voice reaches its limits in the effort to colorfully embellish the dramatic events...the so-called flower ballad "Viola," based on a text by Schubert's friend Franz von Schober, consists of nineteen verses, which Richter joins together with a discreet design, so that the thirteen minutes fly by. This work is rarely heard and sounds like a major discovery in the context of the album. The singer, who impressively takes on a speaking part with the melodrama "Farewell from the Earth", elevates the entire recital.

-- Opera Lounge

Continuing their complete Mozart opera recording cycle, Classical Opera’s latest release shines a light on two early opera works by Mozart. Grabmusik was reported to be the product of a test set by the prince of Salzburg, who: “... not crediting that such masterly compositions were really those of a child, shut him up for a week, during which he was not permitted to see any one, and was left only with music paper, and the words of an oratorio ... During this short time he composed a very capital oratorio, which was most highly approved of upon being performed.” Performed for Holy Week the title can be translated as ‘Cantata on Christ’s Grave’ (literally ‘Grave Music’), and the anonymous text takes the form of a dialogue between a tormented soul, who is desperately lamenting the tragedy of Christ’s death, and an angel. Bastien und Bastienne is the only one of Mozart’s operas to have been written for performance in a private house rather than a theatre. Commissioned at some point in mid-1768 by the renowned and controversial German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, it tells the tale of two young shepherds, Bastien and Bastienne, being reconciled in love the fortune teller and magician Collas after Bastien has briefly been lured away by the attractions of a noble lady from the city. This new recording is uses Mozart’s original 1767 setting of the libretto by F. W. Weiskern & J. H. F. Mu¨ller, the provenance of which was only established in 1980s.