Joseph Haydn's The Creation - a musical masterpiece that was celebrated from the very beginning. For Simon Rattle there is no question that Haydn's Creation contains everything. The whole world. It looks both towards the past and far into the future of everything music can be. It is balance and revolution at the same time - a true work of the Enlightenment. "Magnificent choruses, graceful melodies, the finest polyphony, all firmly anchored in an optimistic view of humanity - anyone who doesn't automatically feel better after hearing it really needs help, " says Simon Rattle with a wink. "The Creation is healthy in a very honest way, " he adds. But health also includes a good dose of humour, and Haydn provides it, even in a setting as sacred as the Creation story. At the same time, a work radiating light also casts a few shadows on our own present. What has remained of the spirit of the Enlightenment? And what have we done with "this world, so great, so wonderful"? To mark his inauguration as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle chose Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation. After two concerts on September 21 and 22, 2023 in Munich's Herkulessaal, the work was performed on September 24 in the historic basilica of Ottobeuren in Upper Swabia, together with the three outstanding soloists Lucy Crowe, Benjamin Bruns and Christian Gerhaher. The Munich recording of the inaugural concerts is now being released on 2 CDs by BR-KLASSIK. With this late work, Joseph Haydn celebrated his greatest triumph: The acclaim he received for his oratorio The Creation placed all his previous successes firmly in the shade. He was already very famous as a symphonic composer, his string quartets had won him the adoration of countless nobles and amateur musicians, and his late masses had secured the unwavering approval of his Esterhazy prince. However, at it's first performance in 1798, "The Creation" caught the spirit of the age - and continues to do so today. The work unites Haydn's orchestral finesse with powerful choruses, combining the vivid account of the creation story with subtle musical interpretation and making it a musical manifesto, as it were, of the Age of Enlightenment. In this regard, the oratorio has enjoyed an unbroken performance tradition, and continues to pose a challenge to every world-class ensemble today. In 1946, one year after the end of the war, Haydn's masterpiece was the first oratorio ever to be performed in the basilica in Ottobeuren - at that time still in the organ loft. The 1986 performance by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein remains legendary to this day.
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde for Tenor, Baritone & Piano / Gerhaher, Beczala, Huber
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98May 05, 2023
Christian Gerhaher’s new recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in a version with piano featuring tenor Piotr Beczala and pianist Gerold Huber.
"This recording of Das Lied von der Erde does not represent a preliminary stage in Mahler’s compositional process but stands alongside it as its equal. […] The piano version of Das Lied von der Erde is more daring and at the same time more intimate, forcing the singers to sing in a different, more subtly nuanced, way than they would with an orchestra, while listeners are obliged to listen more intently and to prolong the abstract sound in their imaginations until it acquires the rhetorical colour that is implied by Mahler’s music."
On his new album Elegie, Sony Classical artist and pre-eminent lieder singer Christian Gerhaher returns to the beguiling beauty and dark melancholy of late-Romantic Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck.
Schoeck’s song-cycle Elegie was compared to music ‘from another world’ when it was first performed in 1923 and remains one of the unappreciated wonders of the lieder repertoire. Its 24 songs, accompanied by an ensemble of 15 instrumentalists, trace a narrative of aching farewells, lost love, and fading beauty.
Christian Gerhaher is in demand the world over for his instantly recognizable baritone voice, which combines lightness and lyricism with unparalleled depth of meaning. It is the perfect vessel for Austro-German lieder and has found a resonant home in Schoeck’s music. Following in the footsteps of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerhaher has already proved himself a renowned exponent of Schoeck’s Notturno for baritone and string quartet.
On this new recording of Elegie, Gerhaher’s characteristic plangent delivery and intimacy with the microphone reveal the glowing beauty of these curious and captivating songs, which set handpicked poems by Eichendorff and Lenau. The cycle presents a series of atmospheric portraits linked by a first person half-narrative that slips and slides between emotional states, much of it stalked by a deep sense of loneliness.
Schoeck’s dark, introspective score has prompted intrigue among musicologists and historians. Some speculate that Elegie was a reaction to the composer’s intense but ultimately unhappy relationship with the pianist Mary de Senger, and his coming to terms with its anguished end (Elegie is dedicated to the pianist). Others have interpreted the work as Schoeck’s farewell to Romanticism, as the musical avant-garde moved to a place he no longer understood.
Schoeck’s music did react to contemporary trends. Elegie’s etched, precise and luminous ensemble of 15 players glances in the direction of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat.
On this recording, Gerhaher is joined by the boutique ensemble that is the Basel Chamber Orchestra and conductor Heinz Holliger.
REVIEWS
Christian Gerhaher, perhaps [Dietrich] Fischer-Dieskau’s most formidable modern successor, has made an even stronger case in recordings of “Notturno” and “Elegie,” two Schoeck cycles for voice and ensemble. The Sony Classical label released Gerhaher’s account of “Elegie” earlier this year, and I have been listening to it obsessively, a little more mystified and mesmerized each time.
Gerhaher, born to sing such music, applies burnished tone, precise diction, and a hint of a cabaret artist’s arched eyebrows. The ensemble weaves dark magic around him...Heinz Holliger, who conducts the Basel Chamber Orchestra on the Sony recording, chooses to augment the string section, which only enriches the effect.
--The New Yorker (Alex Ross)
In a new recording with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Heinz Holliger, Christian Gerhaher, a Schoeck champion, plies his sumptuous baritone in declamatory lines and arching phrases, and reaches effortlessly for limpid high notes. His voice recedes hauntingly into rests without cheating the full values of the notes.
Transience dominates: A string or a woodwind instrument, sometimes doubling the vocal line, sighs and dissipates against a stark orchestral landscape. Many songs hover around the two-minute mark, expiring quickly like lilacs plunked in a vase — fragrant, blooming, short-lived. Gerhaher and the players deliver the listener from these tiny deaths in the final, and longest, song, “Der Einsame,” sustaining its delicately spun lines in pillowy A-flat major and making peace with loneliness.
Mariss Jansons was one of the most important conductors of our time, celebrated worldwide and held in the highest regard – all the more so since his unexpected death on December 1, 2019. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition," comprising 70 recordings and a box set in representative LP format, documents the final phase of his life and career: his work as chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus between 2003 and 2019. Predominantly live recordings from Munich, Tokyo, Vienna, New York, Waldsassen, and the Vatican enable listeners to experience for themselves musical highlights that are as moving as they are exciting. The set contains a remarkably diverse repertoire, ranging from symphonic music and great choral works to opera, and from the First Viennese School to 20th century classical music. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition" contains works by a broad range of composers, including complete cycles of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler respectively. It is supplemented by fascinating rehearsal recordings that bear witness to Jansons's trusting artistic collaboration with the musicians in his orchestra, together with a large-format, approximately 72-page-long booklet containing background information, essays, an interview, and a detailed track listing.
With Myrthen, baritone Christian Gerhaher, winner of the 2019 Male Singer of the Year from Opus Klassik, embarks on the second chapter of his once-in-a-lifetime project: the complete recording of Robert Schumann’s lieder output.
Since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s epoch-making recording of the 1970s, no singer has devoted himself more thoroughly to the lied output of Robert Schumann than Christian Gerhaher. Lauded as the greatest lied singer of our time, he launched his complete cycle of Schumann’s lieder with the album Frage, for which he was named Opus Klassik’s 2019 Male Singer of the Year. The complete recording is the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream and, he emphasises, “probably the most important project of my life”. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung spoke of “consummate vocal artistry. Gerhaher has opened a new door in lied interpretation”. The Guardian named it one of the year’s best new classical releases.
As always, Gerhaher is accompanied by the equally brilliant pianist Gerold Huber. Most of the lieder he will sing himself, but for the other parts, duets and ensembles he has invited singers from his intimate circle of friends who number among the best in their vocal category, including Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Sibylla Rubens, Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Martin Mitterrutzner.
The complete project will encompass ten CDs, to be issued in a boxed set in 2020. Gerhaher himself is in charge of the project’s conception. Besides Sony Classical, with which he has held an exclusive contract since the onset of his career, he has managed to gain two of his longstanding partners as co-producers in this lavish undertaking: Bavarian Radio and the Heidelberg Spring Festival’s International Song Centre, whose goal is to make artists, concert organisers and audiences alive to the relevance of art song today. Both partners will lend media support to the project.
In the second instalment Gerhaher, Hubert and the Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling will devote themselves to the song cycle Myrthen (Myrtles). It was composed in 1840, Schumann’s “year of song”, when most of his works for voice and piano originated. Conceived as a wedding present for his fiancée Clara Wieck (2019 marks the bicentennial of her birth), Myrthen contains settings of words by nine different poets. As Gerhaher stresses in his notes for the recording, the poems are tightly interrelated in their contents. The sequence Schumann selected creates “not just a picture-book”, Gerhaher writes, “but an anticipatory narrative of the path longed for and awaited by two lovers”, producing “one of the loveliest presents ever bestowed by a loving heart upon another”.
It was in this spirit that Schumann handed Myrthen to Clara on 12 September 1840 in a specially produced luxury edition. Since then it has numbered among the great song cycles in music history.
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REVIEWS:
Tilling’s bright, flexible sound is a perfect foil for Gerhaher’s honeyed warmth. Highlights dotted through the disc include Gerhaher’s performance of Byron’s Aus den Hebräischen Gesängen, with its chromatic, almost Schoenbergian piano introduction. Overall, the disc certainly maintains the standard set by the first one.
– Guardian (UK)
Christian Gerhaher is a deeply impressive singer, as fine as any baritone around in this repertoire. He is expertly accompanied as ever by Gerold Huber, and there is clear well-balanced sound, a very interesting booklet note on the cycle by Gerhaher himself, and full texts and translations.
– MusicWeb International
Written during the late stages of a courtship fraught by opposition from Clara’s father, these 26 songs exalt in the transcendent power of love, and are voiced with exquisite tenderness by German baritone Christian Gerhaher and his partners.
Schumann brings out the best in baritone Christian Gerhaher on this striking recording with pianist Gerold Huber
Frage is the opening chapter of Christian Gerhahrer’s project to record all of Schumann’s songs. For Gerhaher himself, this release represents the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream and, as he himself emphasizes, is “probably the most important project of my entire life.” Since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s pioneering recording of the 1970s no other singer has devoted himself so comprehensively to Robert Schumann’s complete lieder output. Frage will focus on one key cycle. The twelve Kerner Lieder op. 35 are combined here with the op. 49 and op. 89 cycles as well as with the Sechs Gesänge op. 107 and the Vier Gesänge op. 142. This project will include his long-time collaborator and pianist Gerold Huber and fellow singers Julia Kleiter, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Sybilla Rubens, Camilla Tilling and Martin Mitterutzner.
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REVIEWS:
What makes the duo so special is the combination of highest refinement, supreme intellectualism—preferably stern and terribly serious, shot through with a strong sense of the melancholic—with total artlessness and simplicity. Throughout the recital the pervading sense of miniature drama is chilling. If—and probably only if—you listen to and understand the text, Gerhaher and Huber can cause goosebumps with a single syllable (like, say, “Tod”), accompanied by a ghostly draining of color, a Gerhaher hallmark. Schumann lovers and Lied-aficionados will instead paraphrase Karajan: “Everything else is gaslight”.
– ClassicsToday
Even the supposedly straightforward Romanzen und Balladen, Op 49 acquire an extra dimension in their capable hands. It’s typical of the care that has gone into performing every song; there is no sense of any kind of routine on this album.
Brahms: Die schone Magelone / Gerhaher, Walser, Huber
Sony Masterworks
CD
$6.49$12.98Save 50%Apr 21, 2017
In the 1860s Johannes Brahms composed one of the most beautiful song cycles of the romantic era: Die schöne Magelone. Now baritone Christian Gerhaher, a lied singer of international renown, has joined forces with his longstanding accompanist Gerold Huber to record Brahms’s masterpiece. For Gerhaher, named singer of the year in 2016 by the German trade journal Opernwelt and awarded the coveted Wigmore Medal in England for “outstanding musicianship in opera, oratorio and song”, the project is a dream come true.
The 15 poems that Brahms fashioned into “romances” are taken from Ludwig Tieck’s novella The Wondrous Romance of Magelone the Fair and Peter Count of Provence (1797). Inspired by a medieval legend, it tells of the love of the valiant knight Peter of Provence for Magelone, the daughter of the King of Naples.
In 2011 Christian Gerhaher commissioned the well-known German writer Martin Walser to produce a new version of the text, which he then premièred in Coburg together with Gerold Huber and Walser himself.
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REVIEWS:
It is quite clear that the singer and his longstanding accompanist are absolutely at one—they have been performing together since the beginning. Sound is good and all is clear and well defined. For those seeking a commanding and modern German singer in Brahms—no quibbles, this is for you.
– Fanfare
Gerhaher is more compelling in this music even than Fischer-Dieskau is in his classic recording with Sviatoslav Richter. Gerhaher and Gerold Huber sound more athletic in the vigorous songs, and the baritone is more rapt and spiritual in the famous Ruhe.
Recorded as part of Carus' prizewinning "Liederprojekt" series, a charity project produced by Carus and Southwest German Radio that contributes profits to childrens' music education in Europe, this 3 CD set is an extraordinary collection of lullabies from Europa, America, Asia, Africa and Australia with selections that are at once deeply familiar to those that will delight with discovery for both the young and young at heart. With an impressive breadth of performers including Peter Schreier, Calmus Ensemble, Christian Gerhaher, Jonas Kaufmann and much more; it could be said this is the ultimate collection of lullabies that would complete any music library.
Schumann: Szenen aus Goethes Faust / Gerhaher, Karg, Harding
BR Klassik
CD
$29.99Oct 14, 2014
Recording of the Month
When it comes to the music of Robert Schumann the dramatic works have always seemed to be the poor relations when compared to the rest of his music. This is mainly due to the writing of Eduard Hanslick, who at best damned the works with faint praise. The so-called "War of the Romantics" did not help: Schumann was seen as part of the conservative side by the followers of the modernists who included Liszt and Wagner. Either way his dramatic output and especially his opera, Genoveva, a work I enjoy, suffered as a consequence. Scenes from Goethe's Faust did not fare much better, which is a real shame as I have always regarded it as one of his greatest pieces, and not just of his late period, the music of which Hanslick all but dismisses. A convincing argument for the Scenes as a major work is made in the excellent accompanying book.
One of the perceived problems is that it is difficult to describe. It is not an opera but it's hardly an oratorio either. Perhaps a new genre needs to be developed to describe it. Until then perhaps we can call it an opera-oratorio, a description that highlights the best that the work has to offer in both worlds.
Scenes from Goethe's Faust had a prolonged gestation period of some nine years (1844-1853), with the third section having originally been conceived as a standalone work. The first two sections - Schumann was the first composer to set part two of Goethe's text to music - were added later. This led to the criticism that it was unbalanced with the best music being found in the final section, while the rest, which was composed during the period of Schumann's final illness said to lack the spark of inspiration. This is far from the truth. The work has to be seen as a whole or the scenes do not work together. These sections are used to highlight specific aspects of the 'Faust' myth and not the story as a whole.
If the third part could be said to be the most inspired, this is due to Goethe's text. The second part is the most dramatic and lends itself to a more dramatic interpretation through music. The result is a work which deserves more recognition. I would love to hear it performed live but whilst I can't see that happening anytime soon, this is the second new recording to have appeared in the last few years; Wit's Naxos version is the other. Perhaps people are coming to recognise this for what it is: one of Schumann's most important pieces as well as a seminal work in Romantic musical literature.
When it comes to performances the classic recording by Benjamin Britten has always been seen as the one to beat, although I must say that I have always had a soft spot for Abbado's star-studded live Sony recording from Berlin in 1994. I have always enjoyed Abbado's Schumann recordings. Is it any coincidence therefore that Daniel Harding, who became the assistant to Abbado in Berlin the following year, should choose to perform and ultimately record the work as well. This is an excellent performance, a true case of the apprentice learning well from the master. Christian Gerhaher is every bit as convincing as Bryn Terfel in the title role, while Christiane Karg, a soprano to watch, brings out a little more vulnerability to the role of Gretchen than Karita Mattila. That said there is very little to choose between the two, with all performers, soloists, chorus and orchestra, being on top form. Where the present recording wins hands down is on recording quality. There have obviously been a great many improvements in miking live performances over the last nineteen years, as this new recorded sound is a great deal brighter and more natural than that enjoyed by Abbado. This helps to bring out every nuance of the music and gives the listener new insights, especially when it comes to orchestration.
The booklet essay is excellent. It places the work in its true place of prominence. Added to this we find an interview with Christian Gerhaher in which he discusses the piece and a kind of glossary in which the characters are explained. This is all packaged in an attractive hardback book format.
Baritone Christian Gerhaher and soprano Mojca Erdmann perform Hugo Wolf's dramatic and poetic song cycle, "Italian Songbook." Highly appealing to listeners yet challenging for singers and hence rarely heard, Wolf's 46 songs stand as exquisite gems that also embrace a larger story arc, creating a highly memorable dramatic experience. Gerold Huber is the skilled piano accompanist and all three musicians are highly acclaimed.
MAHLER Rheinlegendchen. Ich ging mit lust. Frühlingsmorgen. Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz. Das irdische Leben. Nicht wiedersehen. Phantasie. Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen. 5 Rückert Lieder. Urlicht • Christian Gerhaher (bar); Gerold Huber (pn) • RCA RED SEAL 756773 (75:52 Text and Translation)
Christian Gerhaher’s generous Mahler recital offers samples of the early, unorchestrated Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit (Early Songs and Ballads), several of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs, the early cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), and the later set of five Rückert songs.
The program begins with three lighter songs, intimately sung. Doubts about Gerhaher’s vocal substance are dispelled in the Songs of a Wayfarer, which he sings with a fuller tone and greater dynamic range. It’s a great performance of Mahler’s early masterpiece. Gerhaher sometimes sounds like the young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, particularly in his upper register, and his Wayfarer approaches the level of Fischer- Dieskau’s magical performance from 1952 with Fürtwangler conducting. (I call it “magical” because it captures Fischer-Dieskau at his most unaffected and therefore most affecting). Gerhaher doesn’t have as rich a lower register as Fischer-Dieskau, nor is his singing, at this stage, marred by the self-consciousness that sometimes affected the older singer.
There’s an appealing modesty to Gerhaher’s approach that suits Mahler’s folk-like early songs particularly well. The voice suggests a sensitive youth singing with great sincerity, which seems at odds with the singer’s unshaven, morose-looking cover photo. (Is this an attempt at marketing Mahlerian angst? Why?) Gerhaher’s lack of mannerisms and lovely though not particularly distinctive sound do not mean that he doesn’t interpret the darker songs with real intensity of emotion—he does. The two big Rückert songs, “Um Mitternacht” and “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” are given satisfying readings, and “Das irdische Leben,” a feverish drama with narrator and several characters like Schubert’s “Erlking,” is strongly characterized.
There’s a treasurable version of the Rückert songs that Fischer-Dieskau recorded with Leonard Bernstein as pianist, a deeper, more italicized approach than Gerhaher’s—it seems to be currently unavailable—and there is also a wonderful concert performance by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson with Roger Vignoles, but I’m sure that I will return to Gerhaher’s performance for his natural manner of singing and for the outstanding contribution of the pianist, Gerold Huber.
I usually prefer to hear the songs that Mahler orchestrated played by an orchestra, but Huber’s piano playing has the rhythmic control of the greatest conductors. Every sound and balance is judged meticulously and his huge range of articulation and color sets a new standard in the playing of Mahler’s orchestral parts on the piano. Other than in the Rückert songs with their very delicate, specific instrumental timbres, I don’t miss the orchestra. The disc is well recorded and highly recommended.
Schubert: Abendbilder / Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber
Sony Masterworks
CD
$9.98Mar 06, 2007
The recital discs of Christian Gerhaher are all excellent – and the latest addition is a collection of Schubert songs worthy falling in love with. Abendbilder (“Evensongs” or more literally: “Evening Images”) is a collection of the nocturnal explorations in song with his accompanist Gerold Huber who shines with his often delicate, always appropriate and delightful contribution.
There is a rarefied quality about Gerhaher’s Lied-interpretations… an aching beauty, sincerity, and correctness that permeates every song. His tone is finer, more sensitive than most – but never stylized. Natural, but not in a nonchalant way. What you hear on record goes well with the impression he makes in person. Friendly but somewhat impenetrable, courteous but distant, very humble but with the slightly intimidating aura of confident authority. There is purpose to what he does and how he does it – but while these are intellectual readings, they are never rarified or pedantic as not to charm the Lieder-lover without reservation.
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