Die Letzte Stunde

Tilo George Coppperfield is a Rock and Roll songwriter with roots in Americana and Blues. Also known as the driving force behind southern rockers 3 Dayz Whizkey where he honed his skills as guitar player and highly-talented song-architect. 2017 gave birth to his first solo record (T.G. Copperfield) and the ambitious successor The Worried Man, a concept album and Rock and Roll Dystopia based on the thrilling story of anti-hero Evil Eye, also released in 2017.

Poro, re dell'Indie ("Porus, King of the Pakistani region", HWV 28) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Alessandro nell'Indie by Metastasio, and based on Alexander the Great's encounter with King Porus in 326 BC. The libretto had already been set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1729 and by Antonio Vivaldi among others and was used as the text for more than sixty operas throughout the 18th century.

Als durch eine Baustelle ein Stau auf einer vielbefahrenen Brücke entsteht, sind die Autoinsassen zwar genervt, denken sich aber ansonsten noch nichts Böses. Erst als die Brücke einzustürzen beginnt, schwant ihnen, dass ihre letzte Stunde geschlagen hat. Doch nicht alle, die bei jener Katastrophe das Zeitliche segnen sollten, geben auch den Löffel ab. Einigen gelingt die Flucht. Fortan macht sich der Tod höchstpersönlich daran, das Gleichgewicht wieder herzustellen und erdenkt sich alle möglichen Unfälle, um das Ableben der Davongekommenen spektakulär zu beschleunigen.

This Edition presents the “Magnificent Seven” and the “encore” in optimum technical quality. In the mid-Fifties of the last century, with the Cold War freezing relations between East and West, the English record label Decca decided to record a series of Russian operas with the Belgrade National Opera. Belgrade in the Yugoslavia of those days under Josip Tito was more open to “the West” than the Warsaw Pact countries gathered under the wing of the Soviet Union. The deal had been struck by former Decca manager and successful promoter of east European folklore in the USA, record executive Gerald Severn.

Anna Prohaska asked Wolfgang Katschner and the Lautten Compagney at the outset of the coronavirus crisis whether they shouldn’t spontaneously organize a musical get-together in this period. This has now resulted in #ERLÖSUNG/REDEMPTION, a sequence of music selected solely from Bach cantatas, compiled in keeping with the aforenamed conceptual association. We see the motto ERLÖSUNG/REDEMPTION as having multiple meanings, for instance: can music give us consolation in times of sickness and crisis; can it open up emotional and contemplative spaces for us; is it redemptive for us as musicians to be the “Instruments” in engendering music and therefore spirituality… ? Besides Anna as soloist and three other singers, we cast a larger group of musicians – around twenty instrumentalists – which stands for the lautten compagney and communes in accompanying the arias Anna sings, hence also initiating a statement or a kind of living sign of a collective such as the ensemble normally represents.