Grieg, Debussy, Kirchner, & Maurice: Mon amie la lune - Songs & Piano Pieces
Prospero Classical
CD
$24.99Mar 17, 2023
Kathrin Hottiger is a Swiss soprano. She studied with Liliane Zürcher at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Since graduating, she has continued her studies with Malin Hartelius. Kathrin Hottiger won third prize at the 2018 "Pietro Antonio Cesti" international competition for baroque opera in Innsbruck, Austria, and was a semi-finalist at the "New Voices" competition in 2019. She received a scholarship from Migros Kulturprozent in 2017 and 2018 In various master classes, Kathrin Hottiger has worked with Bernarda Fink, Edith Mathis, Ton Koopman, and Evelyn Tubb. In the summer of 2022, Kathrin Hottiger performed the role of Zelmira in Joseph Haydn's opera "Armida" at the Bregenz Festival. Further highlights of her career have included engagements in Moscow, Washington DC and Jerusalem. She has worked with ensembles such as the Thomanerchor and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the musica viva orchestra Moscow, Camerata Bern, the Orchester de chambre de Lausanne, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, and the argovia philharmonic under the baton of Rune Bergmann and Jan Willem de Vriend. In 2019, she sang the role of Eurydice in Gluck's opera "Orphée et Eurydice" at the Tchaikovsky concert hall in Moscow and in the Opera of Komi. In 2020, she gave her debut as Adele ("Die Fledermaus") at the Neues Theater in Dornach and in 2021 she sang Fortuna, Pallade and Damigella in Monteverdi's "L'incoronazione di Poppea" at Waldegg Castle. The CD produced during this production was released by Rondeau Production in Leipzig and is listed in the longlist 1/2023 of the German Record Critics in two categories. Further engagements include the roles of Amore ("Orfeo ed Euridice"), Venus ("Venus and Adonis"), and Gretel ("Hänsel und Gretel") at the Luzerner Theater, Switzerland. Kathrin Hottiger also enjoys singing in a chamber music setting. She regularly performs with the ensemble I Pizzicanti, based in Basel, which specializes in early music. In addition, she has a special love of the song, in particular of French and Scandinavian repertoire. Since spring 2022 she has been making music with the American-French pianist Pierre-Nicolas Colombat. Since 2017 she has given regular recitals as a duo with Edward Rushton.
Brahms: String Sextets Nos. 1 & 2 (arr. T. Kirchner for pian
CAvi-music
CD
$19.99Mar 17, 2017
I was truly relieved to learn that you seem to be not entirely unsatisfied with my arrangement of your sextets. Indeed I put much work into them, but it is always a delicate matter when one senses the author's fine nose lurking in the background. You went through the proofs meticulously, as it seems, and it will thus be hard for me to find further printing errors. There are quite a few in the score (of the sextets)! Ah, well, even fools should find some enjoyment when they deal with them one hundred years from now. In my opinion, trio players will regard these two works as a welcome gift. That last 'prophetic' sentence by Theodor Kirchner - in an 1883 letter thanking Brahms for having praised his arrangements of his sextets - was unfortunately not fulfilled: these trio arrangements of all kinds: according ot general opinion, they are at odds with the current demand for 'historical authenticity'. Anyone who sets out to arrange a musical masterpiece is undoubtedly assuming an immense artistic responsibility. In the best of cases, an arrangement should not only permit other instruments to perform the original in a new setting, but it should illuminate certain aspects in a way the original could not. A truly well-achieved arrangement is thus also an act of interpretation that transforms its model to a certain extent. We, the two string players in the Jean Paul Trio, obviously knew an dloved Brahms's two string sextets from practical experience, having performed them frequently in their original scoring - how much greater was our surprise and fascination when all three of us discovered Theodor Kirchner's arrangements for piano trio! Not mere adaptations for a Hausmusik setting, they represent so much more: in our opinion, these are thoroughly ingenious elucidations of Brahms's string sextets..."
Volker David Kirchner has repeatedly been denied the recognition he deserves because he is out-of-step with the aesthetic ideas that the avant-garde believed were the only valid ones. For Kirchner, e.g. The reference to the tradition and particularly to the sound of the human voice cannot be denied. His obsidian songs are characterized by almost theatrical drama, while the songs of poems by Else Lasker-Schuler and the cycle Media vita in morte sumus rather emphasize the meditative. The two last mentioned works were written for the mezzo voice heard on this recording, Julia Ostertag.
New music in the United States since World War II has been a spirited arena of diverse ideologies. Serialism, minimalism, indeterminacy, “New Romanticism”, and other musical pathways have attracted their passionate constituencies of composers and audience. Of composers who have chosen to go their own way, working apart from the ever-changing mainstream, a major figure is Leon Kirchner. Single-mindedly following his own vision, he has developed a powerful inimitable language...
The works on this recording span four decades. Although the composer’s music has gone through a subtle evolution, the basic features of Kirchner’s musical language are apparent from the start. His music tends to the rhapsodic, with impulsive movement from lyric to dramatic, and asymmetrical rhythm and phrasing. Works are conceived as organic wholes. (All the multimovement works on this recording are “played without pause”.) In the earlier music particularly, sectional contrasts are sharp, marked by clear tempo changes; in his later music, the textural continuity becomes more homogeneous, the changes gradual and seamless. The tonal language is chromatic but not serially organized. The composer’s markings in the scores are detailed and sometimes unusual: “Haltingly”, “Wild”, “Coming from nowhere, almost out of control.”
