Mahler Wunderhorn

Throughout his lifetime, Gustav Mahler's musical imagination got sparked by the Wunderhorn anthology of folk poetry compiled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Whether autonomous lieder or conscripted into symphonic service, Mahler’s Wunderhorn settings represent some of his most exotic, exhilarating, but also visionary music. The Wunderhorn songs evoke and celebrate a lost era but they also prefigure its demise. Mahler captures this ambiguity in uncompromisingly melodious and idyllic, but also satiric, relentless and cruel music.

In 1806 Goethe reviewed an anthology of German folk poems that Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano had only recently published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) and noted presciently: “Best of all, how- ever, this volume should lie on the piano of a music lover or a master musician in order that justice may be done to the songs that it contains either by means of familiar, traditional melodies or by nestling up to appropriate tunes or, if God so decrees, coaxing from them new and signicant melodies.”

Haitink's Mahler interpretations offer a combination of objectivity and distance, emotional reflection and release, continuity and tradition. Under Haitink, the Concertgebouw secured its reputation as one of the world's great Mahler orchestras and their cycle of the composer's symphonies and orchestral songs stands as witness to the orchestra's feeling for its deep history and to the enduring artistry of its conductor.

The initial inspiration for this project came to me while I was writing a monograph on Schönberg’s “Verklärte Nacht”, Il labirinto e l’intrico dei viottoli [The Labyrinth and the Tangle of Pathways].

Peter Schöne – baritone, PhilHarmonia Octet Prague: Vilém Veverka, Monika Boušková – oboe, Irvin Venyš, Karel Dohnal – clarinet, Martin Petrák, Václav Vonášek – bassoon, Přemysl Vojta, Ondřej Vrabec – horn.

Mahler and Bruckner both are composers who have designed immense symphonic worlds based on intimate writings. This is the main theme of this album, which is Enrique Mazzola’s fifth album conducting l’Orchestre national d’le-de-France. It unites these two emblematic composers of the Germanic classical repertoire, with Mahler’s magnificent orchestral Lieder (Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), beautifully performed by baritone Markus Werba, and completed by Bruckner’s Vier Orchesterstücke.

Anne Schwanewilms is considered one the greatest dramatic sopranos of our time, and her performances in operas by Richard Strauss, Wagner and Mozart have earned her praise from critics and public alike around the world. She is also equally distinguished in the recital hall and her first CD for ONYX 'Das Himmlischer Leben' (Liszt & Mahler) was universally praised. For her second ONYX disc, Mahler again features - the searing and bleak emotions of 'Kindertotenlieder', the 'Rückert Lieder' cycle and three 'Wunderhorn' songs. These are prefaced by the sumptuously romantic early Op. 2 set of four songs by Schoenberg.

Experience the grandeur of Gustav Mahler's symphonic masterpieces with Otto Klemperer's mesmerizing renditions in the remastered edition of Klemperer's programme of Mahler works.

Mahler’s 4th Symphony and the lieder of Des knaben Wunderhorn are symphonic scores with a hue similar to that which can be found in chamber music.