Peter Schöne

Justus Hermann Wetzel's beautiful, catchy songs have accompanied Peter Schöne since the beginning of his singing career. Schöne released his first CD with recordings of Wetzel's fascinating compositions in 2004, while he was still studying at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). With the release of the double album, Schöne once again pays homage to the composer by placing previously unpublished works by Wetzel in the context of contemporaries such as Hugo Wolf, Othmar Schoeck and Nikolai Medtner. The double album not only marks an appreciation of Justus Hermann Wetzel's work, but also presents a captivating musical portrait of the songs of that era.

Justus Hermann Wetzel's beautiful, catchy songs have accompanied Peter Schöne since the beginning of his singing career. Schöne released his first CD with recordings of Wetzel's fascinating compositions in 2004, while he was still studying at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). With the release of the double album, Schöne once again pays homage to the composer by placing previously unpublished works by Wetzel in the context of contemporaries such as Hugo Wolf, Othmar Schoeck and Nikolai Medtner. The double album not only marks an appreciation of Justus Hermann Wetzel's work, but also presents a captivating musical portrait of the songs of that era.

Justus Hermann Wetzel's beautiful, catchy songs have accompanied Peter Schöne since the beginning of his singing career. Schöne released his first CD with recordings of Wetzel's fascinating compositions in 2004, while he was still studying at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). With the release of the double album, Schöne once again pays homage to the composer by placing previously unpublished works by Wetzel in the context of contemporaries such as Hugo Wolf, Othmar Schoeck and Nikolai Medtner. The double album not only marks an appreciation of Justus Hermann Wetzel's work, but also presents a captivating musical portrait of the songs of that era.

This is the second release ever of Henzes famous Oratorio, after the release of the general rehearsal for the world's first premiere from 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon. Excellent sound technique, first class singers and orchestra (conducted by none other than Peter Eötvös) as well as a booklet containing detailed liner notes and the libretto contribute in making this album a very important testimony about the music of the 20th century. Henze wrote the Oratorio as a Requiem for Che Guevara and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816, immortalized in the painting of the same name by Theodore Gericault. The work employs a large orchestra, a speaker, a soprano, a baritone, and choruses. In the course of a performance, the chorus members move from left side of the stage, “the Side of the Living,” to the right side, “the Side of the Dead.”

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.

The piercing intelligence and dry registered ardour of Peter Schreier's particular qualities as a Lieder singer are ideally suited to the impulsive, dramatic, often melancholy spirit of Schumann's idiom, which itself found fullest expression in the songs that he wrote throughout his life and which this set so usefully surveys, from the total identification of the Romantic artist with his life and loves in the Liederkreis Op.24 to elliptical and ruminative settings of Lenau, the last work that Schumann composed in Dresden before his move to Düsseldorf, now less well-known than they should be but touched by circumstantial tragedy: Lenau's death was announced on the day of the first performance. The composer felt 'as if I were a tolling-bell all unawares and later wrote to his publisher, urging a speedy release of the cycle: 'I should be pleased if you would help me create a modest monument to the great but unfortunate poet'.

In 1991, Philippe Herreweghe and La Chapelle Royale recorded three Bach cantatas on the themes of suffering and death - death viewed as a kindly comforter. The soloist was the prodigious bass Peter Kooy, a long-standing partner of the ensemble and a key figure in it's magnificent survey of Bach's cantatas, motets and Passions.

During Johann Sebastian Bach’s extraordinarily hectic and industrious first Leipzig compositional period a new musical orientation manifested itself in the second half of 1726. Since the end of May 1723, practically without a break, he had composed a new cantata every week, rehearsed it with his musicians, and then realized its performance. His usual preference in these works had been for large ensembles enabling him to present magnificent choral numbers to Leipzig churchgoers. But now these opulent ensembles yielded to a combination of solo voice parts and relatively small instrumental ensembles. Instead of grand choral numbers and monumental cantus firmus settings, finely elaborated arias were now what dominated. The texts that now were pre- ferred also must have created a stir: in these works a pronouncedly subjective first-person “Ich“ came into the foreground of what were increasingly ex- pressive poetic texts.

During Johann Sebastian Bach’s extraordinarily hectic and industrious first Leipzig compositional period a new musical orientation manifested itself in the second half of 1726. Since the end of May 1723, practically without a break, he had composed a new cantata every week, rehearsed it with his musicians, and then realized its performance. His usual preference in these works had been for large ensembles enabling him to present magnificent choral numbers to Leipzig churchgoers. But now these opulent ensembles yielded to a combination of solo voice parts and relatively small instrumental ensembles. Instead of grand choral numbers and monumental cantus firmus settings, finely elaborated arias were now what dominated. The texts that now were pre- ferred also must have created a stir: in these works a pronouncedly subjective first-person “Ich“ came into the foreground of what were increasingly ex- pressive poetic texts.

„Though recorded periodically and treated as a cultural touchstone in German-speaking countries, Brahms’s Die schöne Magelone still leaves seasoned English-speaking audiences asking, ‘What, exactly, is it?’