Gerald Kein

Gerald F. Kein, founder of the OMNI Hypnosis Training Center, is one of the most distinguished and respected hypnotists worldwide, a pioneer in modern hypnotism. He has trained thousands of hypnotists and has influenced greatly how we work today. In this 6 DVD Set that was recorded in Zurich, Switzerland, Gerald shows it all. A must have for all hypnotists!

Italian songbook is a collection of 46 Lieder (songs for voice and piano) by Hugo Wolf (1860–1903). The first 22 songs (Book 1) were composed between September 1890 and December 1891, and published in 1892. The other 24 songs (Book 2) were composed between March and August 1896, and published the same year. The time lag between the two volumes was caused by Wolf's long-proposed opera, Der Corregidor (1895), which might have been inspired by his personal love triangle with his friend’s wife Melanie Köchert.

Italian songbook is a collection of 46 Lieder (songs for voice and piano) by Hugo Wolf (1860–1903). The first 22 songs (Book 1) were composed between September 1890 and December 1891, and published in 1892. The other 24 songs (Book 2) were composed between March and August 1896, and published the same year. The time lag between the two volumes was caused by Wolf's long-proposed opera, Der Corregidor (1895), which might have been inspired by his personal love triangle with his friend’s wife Melanie Köchert. The 46 lyrics of the songs were taken from an anthology of Italian poems by Paul Heyse (1830–1914), translated into German and published with the title of Italienisches Liederbuch in 1860.] Despite Heyse’s diverse poetic selections, Wolf preferred the rispetto, a short Italian verse usually consisting of eight lines of ten or eleven syllables each, as a result of which the songs are short.

Born in Windischgrätz in 1860, Hugo Wolf spent most of his life in Vienna. Having suffered frequently from depression and, ultimately, syphilis-induced madness, the Austrian composer died in an asylum in 1904 and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna alongside Beethoven and Schubert, other great exponents of the German classical Lieder genre to which he had devoted most of his creative life. Besides his 300 songs, Wolf completed only one opera, Der Corregidor (1896), and a handful of orchestral and chamber works. Endlessly self-deprecating and self-critical, he went for long periods without composing anything, interspersed with years of fevered inspiration during which he wrote ceaselessly. (Schubert, who lived to just thirty-one, composed twice as many songs as well as nine symphonies, fifteen string quartets, twenty-one piano sonatas and much more.)

His colleague Georg Philipp Telemann, who was only a few years older, described him as “the greatest spirit of his time”. Reinhard Keiser is a striking example of a musician who was held in the highest esteem in his time, but is hardly present today. He wrote numerous stage works for the Hamburg Opera at the Gänsemarkt.

George Szell or Otto Ackermann: which one of these legendary renditions of the Four Last Songs by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is your favourite? Make your own judgement with this collection of the best Strauss recordings by the grande dame of German lieder. It also demonstrates her talent in the piano/voice format, with her long-time accompanists Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons, and in opera, with landmark performances of Capriccio’s closing scene conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and excerpts from Arabella with Lovro von Matačić.