Zwerg

Insomnia is a persistent or recurrent sleeplessness. When we sleep fitfully or lie awake night after night, we conjure up all manner of images, fantasies and feelings, which in the hours of darkness or twilight mostly seem confused, larger than life and very existential. That is how it is with our choice of Lieder. The pieces examine the great feelings and issues like love, death, hate, yearning, under the magnifying glass of nocturnal sensitivity. Worlds arise in which one no longer knows what is true and what is not. And that is what is special about our Insomnia: everything is possible, and everything is to be found in the ears and the eyes of the listener.

On her PENTATONE debut album, young German star soprano Anna Lucia Richter explores the heart-wrenching, timeless and universal feeling of Heimweh (homesickness) through a collection of extraordinary Schubert songs. Richter approaches the notion of Heimweh from several perspectives: from that of queens, young girls and shepherds to that of soldiers, dwarfs and gravediggers. The repertoire consists of the original, German-language version of Ave Maria, three Mignon songs (Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Heiss micht nicht reden and So lasst mich scheinen), the sinister Der Zwerg, the expansive flower ballad Viola and many others. Richter is accompanied by pianist Gerold Huber, with whom she has formed a congenial Lieder tandem in the last years. They are joined by clarinettist Matthias Schorn on the final song of the program, the quasi concert aria Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.

Previously, soprano Fatma Said’s latest albums, El Nour and Kaleidoscope crossed cultures and musical genres, her new album Lieder instead focuses on German-language songs of the Romantic era: lieder by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

While soprano Fatma Said’s previous Warner Classics releases crossed cultures and musical genres, this album focuses entirely on German-language songs of the Romantic era: lieder by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.At the age of 18, Fatma left her native Cairo to study at the Hanns Eisler Conservatory in Berlin and “Ever since then, the joy of singing this genre has been central to my musical life … I am very passionate about lieder … This wonderful combination of great German poetry and genius composers like Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.”

Mödl is present from the very first note, and, just for a moment, Wagner's idea of the union of man and woman into the perfect human being seems to have become reality. Brünnhilde's visions of fear are then of oppressive intensity, followed by moments of peaceful illusion and elemental power, before she unconditionally relinquishes her divinity. In her autobiography 'So war mein Weg', Mödl confesses that the Siegfried-Brünnhilde interplay was the most difficult role she experienced in the entire Ring: "The part is short, but it is always a third above my register. I had to be particularly careful", something she had to do most of the time.

The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious "Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs" in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha Classics for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of Lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to ‘tell a story’ for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because ‘they are genuine operas in just a few minutes… mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom’.

Konstantin Krimmel and Doriana Tchakarova can be regarded as one of the most exciting and artistically interesting Liedduos of the new Generation after sensational performances and competition successes. The foundation for the success of last year is a long-standing intensive cooperation, and work on the combination of Word and tone in the international repertoire of classical, romantic and modern songs.

Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler (* 25. Januar 1886 in Schöneberg; † 30. November 1954 in Ebersteinburg bei Baden-Baden; beigesetzt auf dem Bergfriedhof in Heidelberg) war ein deutscher Dirigent und Komponist. Er gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Dirigenten des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Everything the conductor Sir Simon Rattle touches "turns to gold". Everything except for the music dramas of Richard Wagner, that is! It has often been asserted, albeit without good reason, that Rattle and Wagner do not go together. This has now been conclusively disproved by the third collaboration between Rattle and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, together with a team of the very best Wagner singers. This concert performance of "Das Rheingold", the first opera in Wagner's mighty tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung", was performed in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz on April 24 and 25, 2015, and has now been brought out by BR KLASSIK on two CDs just a few months after the live event.