After their album Selige Stunde, Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch used the lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, to make a further series of recordings. Their second album of songs is devoted to Franz Liszt, a composer for whom both feel a special affinity and whose music has long featured in their shared concert career.
This DAF overview from Mute's Grey Area pulls from Alles Ist Gut, Gold und Liebe, and Für Immer, the three Conny Planck-produced albums Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado released on Virgin during 1981 and 1982. It's even-handed in its selections, with six tracks off Gold und Liebe and seven each from the other two. Virtually all the highlights are here, and almost all of them dish out the impossibly clenched, bruising rhythms and barked vocals DAF perfected during this phase. The slower, sleazier, and even more sinister material ("Im Dschungel der Liebe," "Prinzessin") is also well represented. Naturally, this is the best dose of early electronic body music short of Mute's fine 1998 album reissues.
Star tenor Piotr Beczala presents a selection of romances by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, together with the acclaimed lied accompanist Helmut Deutsch. The romance was the most popular musical genre in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russia, practised by professionals as well as amateurs. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff both enriched this genre with their lyricism and melodic invention. Elevated by Deutsch’s splendid accompaniment, Beczala delivers these songs with a great sense for the Slavic idiom and meaning of the words, combined with colourful lyricism and italianità, perfectly fitting the Russian and cosmopolitan musical language of these two masters.
Known for their onstage charisma and camaraderie, Ottawa’s Lara Deutsch (flute) and Adam Cicchillitti (guitar) began performing together in 2019 after discovering their mutual love for the music of Piazzolla. With an established discography as individual artists on the Analekta and Leaf Music labels, as well as numerous accolades in their respective fields, one of the primary focuses of the duo is to perform and promote the works of their Canadian friends and colleagues internationally.