Ernst Marzendorfer

In 1914, Franz Schmidt staged his opera Notre Dame at the Vienna State Opera to great acclaim. Immediately afterwards, he was looking for material for a new opera when he came across the novel Fredigundis by Felix Dahn, which is loosely based on historical events from the 6th century. Schmidt worked on the project from 1916 to 1921, with the premiere taking place in Berlin in December 1922. Schmidt’s music for Fredigundis marks the end of a development that runs through the so-called ‘Classic-Romantic’ period. The work is characterised by extensive chromaticism and a boundary-pushing expansion of the major-minor tonal system paired with dense counterpoint and perfect compositional artistry in the vocal parts. The dramatic mezzo-soprano Dunja Vejzovic, who became famous for her Wagner roles in Bayreuth and Salzburg, performed on all the major opera and concert stages of the world. The excellent cast of singers in this performance is supported by Austrian conductor Ernst Märzendorfer, who also mastered several instruments and composed piano concertos, incidental music and a ballet. On this recording, he conducts the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which has established itself as an opera orchestra through a long and successful collaboration with the MusikTheater an der Wien.

Nicanor Zabaleta was one of the foremost harpists of the 20th century, as important to the advancement of the harp as Segovia was to the guitar. At the age of seven, Zabaleta's father, an amateur musician, bought him a harp from an antique shop. The young Nicanor soon began taking lessons from Vincenta Tormo de Calvo, who was on the Madrid Conservatory faculty, and with Luisa Menarguez. At 17, he began studies in Paris; among his teachers there were Marcel Tournier and Jacqueline Borot.