Rote Lieder

Marking the 80th birthday of Grace Bumbry in January 2017, this box set celebrates her magnificent career across opera, oratorio and Lieder and soul in a handsome original jackets collection of 8CDs and a DVD of her legendary Carmen.

Robert Schumann’s talismanic song-cycle Dichterliebe has been recomposed by German composer and conductor Christian Jost. The results can now be heard on an album from Deutsche Grammophon which pairs the new score with recordings of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and the Liederkreis op.39 made by Jost’s wife, mezzo-soprano Stella Doufexis, a year before her tragic death from cancer. Jost’s reimagined Dichterliebe, performed by tenor Peter Lodahl and the Horenstein Ensemble, casts new light on the shifting moods of Schumann’s composition. Dichterliebe is set for worldwide release on April 12 via Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company.

This 11-CD set, one might say jokingly, contains all the music ever written for the soprano voice and a bit for mezzo as well. And indeed, it's a staggering collection: In addition to her great Verdi heroines (the two Leonoras, Aida, Amelia, and Elvira in Ernani), Price is heard in her Puccini roles–Manon Lescaut, Butterfly, Tosca–and at least two dozen other roles, most of which she never sang on stage. Here are her heroic, secure Leonore in Fidelio, Strauss's high-flying Egyptian Helen, Purcell's Dido, Barber's Cleopatra, Bellini's Norma, Ariadne, Verdi's Violetta and Desdemona, Bizet's Carmen, Mozart's Countess, and Fiordiligi…

Götz Alsmann is back. With a brand new, "L.I.E.B.E." titled studio album, his sixth overall for the renowned jazz label Blue Note. Of course he was never gone. But in recent years the master of the German jazz hit has shown himself to be more internationally oriented musically on records and in live concerts. First “In Paris” (2011), then “On Broadway” (2014) and most recently “In Rom” (2017) he explored the song worlds of these metropolises and countries, always congenially provided with corresponding German lyrics.