Faust Zweiter Teil

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's undead tragic play in two parts. It's the most famous work of Goethe and one of the greatest monuments of German and world literature.

Few literary works exerted as strong an influence on European culture in the 19th century as Goethe’s play Faust. While several important composers drew inspiration from it, Franz Liszt seems to have had a particularly close relationship with Goethe’s masterpiece. He came up with the idea of a symphony ‘in three characteristic pictures’, each devoted to a key character in the play: Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. Rather than telling the story of the play, Liszt composed a psychological exploration of these three main figures. He was also a pioneer in his use of leitmotifs, i.e. short musical ideas that underline a trait of character or evoke feelings, a process that his future son-in-law, Richard Wagner, would take even further in his operas.

In celebration of Edith Mathis’ 80th birthday, this collects her recordings of opera, oratorio and song. Her versatility is displayed in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Fidelio, Der Rosenkavalier, Freischütz, Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust, and the role she created in Henze’s opera Der junge Lord. The collection also includes her complete Schumann song recordings with Christoph Eschenbach, and, for the first time a selection from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch with Karl Engel.

Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [staf mal]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kalit in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century…

Here is an exhaustive panorama of famous works of the greatest composers, masterpieces known and loved by classical music lovers all over the world. It is a music that has become familiar to everyone, integrated into mass culture-adorning the soundtracks of movies, TV shows and commercials that are part of our everyday life. This compilation is therefore a perfect introduction to the world of classical music, intended for all, including those who can not yet put a name on some tracks that they already know and love.