Weiss Moskau

Zarah Leander - Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh'n (1997)
Cabaret/Oldies | German | German | MP3 CBR 320kbps | 52:26 | 121 MB

Leander began her career in the late 1920s, and by the mid 1930s her success in Europe, particularly in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, led to invitations to work in the United States. Leander was reluctant to relocate her children, and opted to remain in Europe, and from 1936 was contracted to work for the German Universum Film AG (UFA) while continuing to record songs. Joseph Goebbels, a leading Nazi Party member, once suggested that she was Jewish because Zarah is a variation of the Old Testament name Sarah. She silenced him by noting that Joseph was also a Biblical name. This disc is a compilation of her best songs, 16 tracks altogether, all in German.

Long a center for the creation and performance of new music, Oberlin Conservatory showcases the composition faculty in the recording premieres of three works performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and featuring alumni saxophone soloist Noah Getz '97 and soprano Olivia Boen '17.

Alessandro Stradella’s colourful life and eventual murder have since furnished writers with material for novels and stageworks. But he was very highly regarded as a composer during his short life, and made important contributions to several musical forms with operas, instrumental sinfonie and cantatas. This programme features five seldom performed chamber cantatas and two of his sinfonie or sonatas. Soprano Christine Brandes has a light, pleasing voice, and an athletic technique which enables her to circumnavigate most of Stradella’s often demanding vocal writing. But she is stretched to her limits, perhaps even a shade beyond, in the virtuoso, fiendishly difficult ‘Ferma il corso e torna al lido’.

Although familiar with the Art of Fugue for much of my life, I did not set about learning it in its entirety until 2020. When Covid-19 put all concert life on hold, like my fellow musicians, I was left homebound with an ever increasing calendar of cancellations; my first Art of Fugue recital was the one I mourned the most. I took advantage of the time of seclusion to immerse myself in the work. Day after day, I turned to it for comfort, for inspiration and for connection in an unsure world. To be in constant awe at Bach’s limitless imagination and skill while challenging myself to hear - really hear - all that was going on, elevated my mood and gave me great joy. It was an act of devotion. I cherish the memory of it.

La gamme is Marais’s instrumental chamber version of an opera, based on an ascending harmonic scale and employing a succession of tempi, ensemble textures and forms, linked together by skilfully wrought transitions.

Irene Kalisvaart was awarded the highest prize at the National Competition for Young Guitarists in Amsterdam at the age of 17. She studied with Jorge Oraison in Rotterdam, and continued with Ansgar Krause and Hubert Käppel at the Musikhochschule Köln where she finished her studies with distinction. She then went on to complete the ‘concert exam’ with Hubert Käppel in 2001. In between and thereafter she received numerous scholarships, international prizes and awards. Valuable musical mentors and masterclasses include Darko Petrinjak, Laura Young, Dale Kavanagh, Zoran Dukić, Àlex Garrobé, Pablo Márquez, Marco Socías, Thomas Müller-Pering, Aniello Desiderio and David Russell.