Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

One of the most celebrated singers in the world, Barbara Hendricks was invited by Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Festival, to take her first steps in the world of jazz in 1994. In fact, what could have been more natural? This music has lived in her forever, it is part of her roots, of someone who first started singing with the Negro spirituals in the church of her father, a pastor in Arkansas. After having for many years explored the repertories of the great jazz instrumentalists and singers of the 20th century, she has for the past decade delved into the roots of jazz: the blues. This was first of all the case with the programme Blues Everywhere I Go that took us into the heart of the Mississippi Delta; today she offers us a new project: The Road to Freedom. The songs of blues and gospel have played a highly important role in accompanying and inspiring the courageous activists who have struggled for civil rights in the USA, a struggle led by Martin Luther King in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The emotional power of these songs, and the example of the activists’ conviction are more than ever necessary to help us confront the complexities and contradictions of today’s world, one too often based on division and hatred, and not enough on love and that solidarity to which Dr. King was always referring. Barbara Hendricks places her universally recognizable voice at the service of this music: a full-flavored voice with varied tone-colors and a wealth of color that make this repertory so fascinating and bewitching.

Classical Music

Following the success of her album Blues Everywhere I Go in 2015, Barbara Hendricks now returns to the grand Classical repertoire in this performance of lieder by one of the greatest composers in the genre, Gustav Mahler. An essential part of Gustav Mahler's work belongs to the lied genre, which, together with the symphony, is one of the two key facets of his output. They are of capital importance in his work because the composer's fusion of the two genres succeeded in breathing new life into both. The 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen' (Songs of a Wayfarer) belong to his early creative period. This cycle of 4 very different melodies, with it's obvious similarities to Schubert's Winterreise, relates the story of a dreamy young man who is haunted in his wanderings by the memory of his beloved. He is the very picture of the Romantic Wanderer, portrayed with his existential sorrow, his mood swings, his hopes and his vexations. Fifteen years later, Mahler turned his attention to the poet Friedrich R�ckert in composing his R�ckert-Lieder, which marked an oasis of equilibrium during one of the happiest periods of his life, when he met his future wife, Alma. These superb miniatures translate inner states of mind in which the spirit of the traditional lied blends with that of the art lied. Although it is not a song cycle in the strict sense, it does have an overall unity of tone and mood. Having achieved a measure of perfection in the lied genre, Mahler could subsequently focus on a fusion of the lied and the symphony, a feat that would be realized in 'Das Lied von der Erde' (The Song of the Earth), that vast "symphony of lieder" constructed around a handful of Chinese poems. 'Der Abschied' (The Farewell) is the longest in the work, but it is also the most highly developed, and the music has a beauty, which, like the final words of Mahler's masterpiece that concludes this album, is eternal.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This set includes a CD of Barbara Hendricks performing the song cycle with Rolan Poentinen accompanying on piano. Also included is a DVD of Hendricks performing extracts from Schubert's Winterreise.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music