Willem Butter

The profile of Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen continues to rise through her regular appearance on Europe’s major opera, concert and recital stages, and she is consistently praised for her compelling blend of radiant stage personality and purity of vocal tone. This is her first opera arias recital and is focused on Handel and Mozart. Previously on disc, Eriksmoen features on Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust with Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Daniel Harding, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, both with Akademie für alte Musik Berlin under René Jacobs and Glyndebourne Festival conducted by Robin Ticciati, and in a ​“poised, elegant and persuasive” (Guardian) debut recital disc featuring songs by Grieg, Grøndahl, Wolf and Strauss with Alphonse Cemin (Alpha).

The story of the power-hungry Agrippina was one of Handel's greatest operatic successes. The satirical text plays on the political situation under Pope Clement XI. at. The rousing production from the Slovak National Theater Bratislava is a lively baroque opera on original instruments.

Händel’s La Resurrezione is an oratorio for Easter. It was first performed on Easter Sunday 1708 in Rome. The libretto was written by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. The events related in the story are those of the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ ‘descended into Hell’ to redeem the souls of the patriarchs and prophets who had prepared for His coming. The events in the underworld are set out in series of lively exchanges between an Angel and Lucifer. Meanwhile, the story as seen on earth is related through the conversations of three mortal characters, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and St John the Evangelist. The two planes of the drama are united when the Angel appears to the women at the sepulchre and announces the Resurrection to them.

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphonys Tragic appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless the symphony has more gravitas than its predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. Actually, this is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title. After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend now undertakes Schuberts complete symphonic output. This is the first volume in that series.

These recordings were made between 1937 and 1942, and they represent the sum of Mengelberg's commercially released Beethoven for the Telefunken label.