Romantic Choir Music

Marret Winger recently graduated in Hamburg with honours. She and her accompanist Steffen Hartmann have outstanding references to show from artists such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and others. However, what recommended them for a TACET recording was the standard of the chamber music which they perform together. To demonstrate this they have recorded the "Keller Lieder" (Six Poems by Gottfried Keller) by Hugo Wolf, which many artists wisely steer clear of because of their difficulties and dangerous pitfalls.

"No Wolf lover can afford to miss [this].

There are numerous felicities to savor, and many more to discover. Listen to how Fischer-Dieskau's rhythmic bite and impeccable diction in Jägerlied still manage to impart a sense of legato, or, by contrast, a dulcet sotto voce in the diminuendos of Peregina I's opening phrases. Who else can get away with outsize dynamics in Lebe wohl and avoid melodrama, yet manage a rare fusion of tenderness and austerity in the often sentimentalized Verborgenheit? I can answer that question in two words: Sviatoslav Richter. This pianist takes not one note of Wolf's frequently unwieldy piano parts for granted, whether making Fussreise's interludes sound simpler than they actually are to play well, or effortlessly sailing through Abschied's wacky postlude with a straight face."

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Reviewing earlier release of this recording

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With the present recording the thirty-year-old Fischer-Dieskau demonstrates his subtle art of textual exegesis, bathed in the dolcezza and suavity of his still young baritone voice. The selection from Hugo Wolf's Mörike Lieder, composed in a frenzy of creativity in 1888, comes from the archives of the former RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin (known today as DeutschlandRadio Kultur) and is now made available for the first time after careful restoration. Fischer-Dieskau is mainly accompanied by Hertha Klust, his pianist of choice in the early 50s. Hardly any musician left behind as many recordings as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose career began in the early postwar years and only came officially to an end in 1993. Besides his commercial recordings, a number of undiscovered gems lie in the archives of Europe's radio stations. Some of them will be released by audite in the near future.

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WOLF, E.W.: 4 Symphonies

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf’s contemporaries called him the “Weimar Wolf,” a fitting label, inasmuch as Weimar’s musical environment greatly influenced the life of this teacher, concertmaster, and organist who advanced to the post of chapel master to Duchess Anna Amalia, a noted patron of the arts. Even though he was a thorn in the flesh for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s prince of poets, he remained true to the court and his duchess over the decades. He even declined with thanks an offer from the King of Prussia, Frederick II, to succeed Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Berlin. However, the fact that Wolf highly valued Bach’s empfindsamer Stil and the style of the Berlin chapel master Carl Heinrich Graun is clearly audible in his works. During recent years Wolf’s instrumental music has attracted increasing attention. Now Michael Alexander Willens has recorded Wolf’s oratorio Jesu, deine Passion will ich jetzt bedenken. In this work, like Graun in his Tod Jesu, the composer, who in 1756 was only a little over twenty, reflects on the Passion of Christ and relives it with deep emotion. An absolute masterpiece from the age of musical sensibility with arias of great melodic appeal that are guaranteed to leave no heart unmoved!

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735-92) developed into a central figure in Weimar’s music world after 1760. Among the chamber genres Wolf devoted himself extensively to was the string quartet, or quartet for four stringed instruments, which for him referred to the older Northern and Central German quadro, a trio sonata with an additional melody part set contrapuntally in trio against a basso continuo. The three quartets, Op. 3, form the genuine high point in Wolf’s quartet oeuvre. His predilection for contrast and his compositional techniques lend these compositions their special appeal.

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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.

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The 46 songs that make up Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch show the composer at his most captivatingly individual; and history has proven that only singers of the utmost artistry can do them justice. Dame Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk are such singers, taking the listener from the depths of pathos through frissons of ecstasy with searching perception. Together with pianist Stuart Bedford, who also devised a new sequence for the songs, the singers performed the set at the 1977 Aldeburgh Festival, where the warmth and ambience of the performance was captured in this BBC stereo recording.

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Homelands is a powerful album of classical art song about exile. Featuring Ian Bostridge, Jennifer France, James Atkinson, Wonsick Oh, and pianist Aron Goldin, who curated the project. The songs (include many favorites by Tchaikovsky and Faure) are on the theme of exile and yearning for home. A performance of Homelands at the Royal Academy of Music in London on World Refugee Day in June 2022, with Olivier Award, Bafta and Tony Award winning actor Sir Simon Russell Beal reading poems by Auden, Brecht and Carol Ann Duffy with ancient Hebrew and Chinese poetry raised over �200,000 for the 30 Birds Foundation, a charity that enabled 500 Afghan school girls to escape the Taliban and fly from Kabul to Canada.

"I am too cowardly to be a proper composer," Hugo Wolf confessed to a Viennese friend when he was barely 28 years old. And the result of his introspection was not so wrong: everything in his life, not only composing, proceeded in explosive spurts. He wandered through the deepest emotional valleys, suddenly flew up into the highest regions, suffered agonies when he couldn't think of anything to say, shouted his enthusiasm about a successful piece to the whole world and still managed to produce a respectable, albeit fragmentary oeuvre, from which the early poem Penthesilea after Heinrich von Kleist's tragedy of the same name stands out as a symphonic masterpiece. The Austrian baritone Benjamin Appl and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, led by its principal conductor Simon Gaudenz, have prefaced this highly dramatic monolith with twelve selected songs, most of which were orchestrated by their author himself: a dozen small, finely polished gems based on texts by Goethe, Mörike and Heyse, whose subtle arrangements leave no doubt that Hugo Wolf would certainly have had the makings of a "proper composer". Whether then, of course, the ingenious things would have been created that posterity owes to him - that is another matter.

Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse’s collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse’s translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf’s settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart. When Wolf’s songbook is performed in its entirety, it is usually done by a male and a female singer, although this is not specified in the score. It is not uncommon for them to be transposed, but the songs are written for high voices, and are here performed by a soprano and a tenor – Carolyn Sampson and Alan Clayton – with Joseph Middleton at the piano. The performers have chosen to present the songs in the order they appear in the printed collection, dividing them between themselves.

REVIEWS:

The Italian Songbook consists of two groups of songs. The first group, consisting of 22 songs, was set in 1890 – 1891 and the second group with 24 songs in 1896. Strictly speaking it isn’t a cycle, and in some recordings the interpreters have opted for their personal order of the songs, but many stick to the order in which Wolf published them, and this is also the case with the present issue. The two singers are well-matched. Carolyn Sampson has been an avid advocate for baroque music for many years, but she has also ventured into art songs...Tenor Allan Clayton‘s career has focused on opera – his Peter Grimes at Covent Garden recently was a resounding triumph – but he has also frequently given song recitals...So, I had high expectations when I set to work with this disc.

The first thing I observed was the sensitive playing of Joseph Middleton, pliable and perceptive. Secondly I noted Carolyn Sampson’s girlish tone in Auch kleine Dinge, and her soft and inward reading. This was a recurrent feature throughout the programme.

When Allan Clayton made his entrance, he at once convinced me: here he displayed his armoury of nuances that had enthralled me on the Liszt disc, his beautiful pianissimo – listen to the end of Gesegnet sei (tr. 4) or the mastery half-voice in Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag’ erhoben – but on the reverse side of the coin his dramatic capacity was just as telling: Wenn du mich mit den Augen streifst und lachst (tr. 38) is just one instance. And Carolyn Sampson has the same sense for drama: so agitated and energetic in Wer rief dich denn? (tr. 6). Looking back on my notes, I see that the pad is littered with positive remarks and exclamation marks, but printing them here would surely be rather tiresome reading – and I rather leave it to those who buy the disc to find all the felicities these two well-endowed Liedersänger indulge in. The prestige word for all singing of Lieder is nuances, and from the above I believe that readers have understood that Carolyn Sampson and Allan Clayton are masterly in that respect.

How do they stand up against the competition from other recordings? Very well, I would say...Sampson and Clayton are certainly among the top contenders.

-- MusicWeb International

Intense, passionate, and impeccable in its musical disciplines, the Berlin-based Artemis Quartet "consistently finds a balance between projecting musical structure and conveying immediacy." Confirming that verdict from the New York Times is this 23CD collection, encompassing all the recordings the ensemble made between 1996 and 2018.

The Artemis Quartet began life in 1989 and developed a particular reputation in the central Austro-German repertoire. If Beethoven justly asserts a powerful presence, the scope of this collection extends as far as Eastern Europe and South America and well into the 20th century. Over the period of nearly a quarter of a century documented in this box, there were changes in the Artemis Quartet's lineup, but as founding cellist Eckart Runge explains, this "brought new inspiration - an opportunity to broaden horizons and introduce fresh ideas."

The ensemble suffered a tragic loss with the untimely death of violist Friedemann Weigle in 2015. Just days earlier, the Artemis had completed a recording of Dvořák's lyrical and poignant 'American' Quartet; it is now released for the very first time. This landmark box is completed by a comprehensive booklet which includes reminiscences from members of the Artemis Quartet and from sound engineers who collaborated with them.

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