Bild 01. April 2023

The baritone Georg Nigl is fascinated by ballads, which unfold in him "dream images". Schubert's long and little-known lied Viola , based on a poem by Franz von Schober, or the great ballads based on texts by Goethe "opened up a world that has always accompanied me, that of the storyteller (…) stories of frightening beauty, with as many colours as possible…". The magnificent pianos on this recording - a Christoph Kern fortepiano after Conrad Graf (Vienna, 1826) and a Steinway & Sons concert grand piano (New York, 1875) - beautifully played by Olga Pashchenko, with whom Georg now forms an intimate and inspired duo, allow us to hear "unknown sounds and sometimes unheard-of colours"…

Schumann composed Kreisleriana in April 1838, at the age of 27: “The youthful thing that I can identify with in Kreisleriana is its spontaneity", writes pianist Aaron Pilsan. "If I had to describe the piece, I would use the German word for crazy, ‘verrückt’, which doesn’t just mean crazy, but also to be disconnected from reality. So, crazy, imaginative and intimate… There is a huge connection between these two German composers, as Jörg Widmann was inspired by Schumann’s music a lot and even his musical language is very similar, even though their styles are obviously very different. The starting point for Widmann’s music is from feelings, from the emotions and sentiments and that is where there is a similarity, but not only there. He even quotes Robert Schumann in his tenth Humoreske, taking a bar directly from Schumann’s Geistervariationen."