Schumann Frauen Liebe Und Leben

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.

National Socialism had devised its own notion of the value of German art and culture. This was ruthlessly put into practice when the Nazis took over power in 1933. The more than 175 "degenerate" recorded musical items in this extraordinary 10-CD box set, 'Forbidden But Not Forgotten', relate to the shocking consequences due to that "cleansing". The burning of the Reichstag (7th April) provided the pretext for the prosecution of all who held other political opinions, for the burning of books (10th May) whose authors were on the index of disfavoured and banned writers, for the law that amended entry to the civil service (7th April) that excluded all non-Aryans and led to wholesale dismissals of Jews, especially in orchestras, the administration, among singers, conductors and instrumentalists. By means of the exhibitions "Degenerate Art" (Munich, 1937) and "Degenerate Music" (Düsseldorf, 1938) art and artists who were now to have no place in Nazi Germany were pilloried.

This set with 3 CDs contains the complete songs of Alban Berg, including the complete Jugendlieder. During this musical journey we witness the development of Berg as a composer, who in his Jugendlieder was inspired by Schubert, Schumann, Wagner and Mahler and by his chromatic language by Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. In his own personal style we find the twelve-tone system of his teacher Arnold Schönberg with his free, flowing and lyrical expression.