Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by Ilker Arcayürek

Various composers

Ilker Arcayürek | Fiona Pollak

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085534098
Catnr: AVI 8553409
Release date: 06 March 2020
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085534098

Catalogue number
AVI 8553409

Release date
06 March 2020

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

SONGS OF A WAYFARER
"The International Art Song Competition held by the Hugo Wolf Academy in Stuttgart was the birthplace of this CD. During the competition, Fiona Pollak and I took a certain amount of musical risks and were ultimately rewarded with the First Prize, as well as with the opportunity to record this CD. We
thus extend our most heartfelt thanks to SWR, to CAvi-music, and to all the organizers for their trust and support!

This recording features songs by composers from the period of the kaiserlich-und-königlich Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary around the turn of the 20th century. We wanted to venture outside our comfort zone to discover as many different timbres and new songs as possible. We have selected composers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire of that time, including the region of Vojvodina, which is now part of Serbia.

The variety of art songs featured here not only reflects the Austro-Hungarian period, but also the Austria of today, along with each of our individual artistic personalities. We are two musicians with entirely different origins and religious backgrounds: Austria is where we met and started making music together.
Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer form this recording’s dramatic nucleus.We found it fascinating to present this cycle in a rarely performed higher version for tenor. In our view, the Songs of a Wayfarer serve here as a prologue, a foreshadowing, and a summing up of the content you will encounter in the
remaining songs on this CD. The wayfarer’s story begins with Frühlingsmorgen, a morning in spring. In Franz Léhar‘s two songs he discovers love for the first time. However, he undergoes his first emotional transformation, associated with the first heartache, in Hugo Wolf’s Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag’ erhoben (The moon has raised a grave complaint). From there we wander into the Balkan mountain range, to the Vojvodina region on the Danube. In Elegie the wayfarer expresses his pain and sorrow. Along with the change of mood, the language changes, as well. It comes with the heartfelt yearning to turn back time.

Childhood reminiscences emerge in the thoughts of the wayfarer, who by now has grown older. He returns to his homeland. A confrontation with death, along with a meditation upon its meaning, comes in the songs of Brahms, and Mahler. In the epilogue Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world), we come full circle. The wayfarer finally attains the inner peace for which he so yearned..." © 2019 Ilker Arcayürek

„We wanted to venture outside our comfort zone to discover as many different timbres and new songs as possible.“

Artist(s)

Ilker Arcayürek (tenor)

Born in Istanbul, Ilker Arcayürek grew up in Vienna. As soloist with the Mozart Boys’ Choir he gained first experiences on international stages touring overseas as well as in joint performances at Vienna’s Staatsoper, Volksoper and Kammeroper. He became a member of the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and studied privately with Sead Buljubasic in Vienna. He participated in master-classes with Sir Thomas Allen, Alfred Brendel, Ileana Cotrubas and Thomas Quasthoff. Ilker Arcayürek is the winner of the 2016 International Art Song Competition of Stuttgart’s Hugo Wolf Academy. He was finalist of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 2015 and was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist through to the end of 2017. For BBC Radio 3 he recorded amongst...

Buljubasic in Vienna. He participated in master-classes with Sir Thomas Allen, Alfred Brendel, Ileana Cotrubas and Thomas Quasthoff. Ilker Arcayürek is the winner of the 2016 International Art Song Competition of Stuttgart’s Hugo Wolf Academy. He was finalist of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 2015 and was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist through to the end of 2017. For BBC Radio 3 he recorded amongst others with Harmut Höll and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

“Der Einsame” marks Ilker Arcayürek’s debut album. He looks forward to touring the program to venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, Birmingham’s Town Hall, Vilabertran’s Schubertiada and Barcelona’s L’Auditori.

Ilker Arcayürek joined the opera studio at Zürich Opera in 2010 and became a member of the ensemble of the Stadttheater Klagenfurt in the 2013–14 season, where he appeared as Italian Singer in Der Rosenkavalier, Malcolm in Macbeth, The Prince in The Love for Three Oranges, Alfred in Die Fledermaus and Tamino in Magic Flute. Since the 2015–16 season, Ilker Arcayürek has been a member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater Nürnberg. In Nürnberg his repertoire includes roles such as Rodolfo in La Bohème, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Nadir in Les pêcheurs de Perles and Andres in Wozzeck. Recent guest appearances have included Claudio in Wagner's Das Liebesverbot at Teatro Real in Madrid staged by Kasper Holten under the baton of Ivor Bolton, the Son in Hossam Mahmoud’s Tahrir at the Salzburger Landestheater conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

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Fiona Pollak (piano)

Fiona Pollak was born in Vienna in 1986. She received her first piano lessons at Vienna Music School at the age of five. In 1997 she was accepted as a young student into the organ class of Rudolf Scholz at Vienna University of Music and the Performing Arts. At the same institution she specialized in piano chamber music in the class of Avedis Kouyoumdjian from 2005 to 2007, and successfully concluded her organ studies in 2010. From 2012 to 2015, Fiona Pollak was the titular organist of the municipal parish church of Korneuburg and curator of the Heiller organ. For the 2013/14 academic year she switched over to the class of Graham Johnson at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She went on studying vocal accompaniment...

Fiona Pollak was born in Vienna in 1986. She received her first piano lessons at Vienna Music School at the age of five. In 1997 she was accepted as a young student into the organ class of Rudolf Scholz at Vienna University of Music and the Performing Arts. At the same institution she specialized in piano chamber music in the class of Avedis Kouyoumdjian from 2005 to 2007, and successfully concluded her organ studies in 2010.
From 2012 to 2015, Fiona Pollak was the titular organist of the municipal parish church of Korneuburg and curator of the Heiller organ. For the 2013/14 academic year she switched over to the class of Graham Johnson at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She went on studying vocal accompaniment in the class of David Lutz at Vienna University of Music and the Performing Arts, where she obtained her diploma in 2016, unanimously awarded summa cum laude by the jury.
Fiona Pollak was a prizewinner at the First International Competition for Voice and Organ in Neuss, Germany. In tandem with her brother, tenor Angelo Pollak, she won First Prize at the Vocallis Festival in Vaals/NL in 2014; soon thereafter, the duo won Third Prize at the International Song Duo Competition in Enschede/NL.
In 2016 Fiona Pollak was awarded the Special Prize as Best Vocal Accompanist at the renowned Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau. That same year, with duo partner Ilker Arcayürek, she was awarded First Prize at the International Art Song Competition in Stuttgart. Fiona Pollak teaches solo piano and piano accompaniment at the Musikum Music School in Salzburg.
English Translation: Stanley Hanks

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Composer(s)

Franz Liszt

If you would open any biography of Franz Liszt, you would probably mostly read about his disquiet life as a piano virtuoso, his passionate love life, and the return to his catholic roots at the end of his life. Although all of this might be true, it only scratches the surface of his comprehensive musical personality. Liszt was a pianist, conductor, teacher and organiser, but above all he was a composer of a voluminous, capricious body of work. Even though his piano works formed his core business, he gave rise to the symphonic poem, got rid of the organ's stuffy appearance, and reinvigorated the oratorio. Moreover, with his piano transciptions of Bach's organ works and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, he was an...

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Gustav Mahler

During his own time, Gustav Mahler was considered as one of the major conductors of Europe, but nowadays he is considered to a major composer who bridged the Late Romantic period to the modern age. Few composers are so connected with the symphonic repertory as Gustav Mahler. Composing symphonies was his 'core business': in every aspect he developed the symphony towards, and sometimes even over, its absolute limits. Almost all of Mahler's symphonies are lenghty, demand a large orchestra and are particularly great in their expressive qualities. With rustic and mythical atmospheres (the start of the First Symphony), daunting chaos (the end of his Sixth), grand visions (end of his Second), cheerful melodies (opening Fourth), romantic melancholy (the famous adagio of...

During his own time, Gustav Mahler was considered as one of the major conductors of Europe, but nowadays he is considered to a major composer who bridged the Late Romantic period to the modern age.

Few composers are so connected with the symphonic repertory as Gustav Mahler. Composing symphonies was his "core business": in every aspect he developed the symphony towards, and sometimes even over, its absolute limits. Almost all of Mahler's symphonies are lenghty, demand a large orchestra and are particularly great in their expressive qualities. With rustic and mythical atmospheres (the start of the First Symphony), daunting chaos (the end of his Sixth), grand visions (end of his Second), cheerful melodies (opening Fourth), romantic melancholy (the famous adagio of his Fifth), evocations of nature (his Third), megalomanic eruptions in the orchestra (his Eighth), and the clamant atonality of his unfinished Tenth, Mahler's musical palette seemed inexhaustible.

His symphonies are captivating, but some could find it a bit 'over the top' at times. For those, his orchestral songs could undoubtedly show there is an incredibly subtle and refined side to his compositional style as well.

In the Netherlands, Mahler is particularly popular due to its close bond with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, which was already established during his lifetime!

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Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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Hugo Wolf

Together with Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf can be considered as one of the greatest composers of Late Romantic lieder. Both of them followed the tradition of Schubert and Schumann, but intensified the gerne with Wagner's techniques of text declamation and harmonic development. What makes Wolf's song cycles special, is the fact that often they are devoted to a single poet, like in his Mörike-Lieder (1889), Eichendorff-Lieder (1889) en Goethe-Lieder (1890). For each cycle, he spent a considerable time studying the text to create the best matching music. His accomodation of musical structure, harmonic subteties and pianistic texture are all inseperable from the lyrics. Partly due to his psychological sophistication his songs can be heard as miniature operas.
Even though he did start writing on several full-fledged operas, it never became a true succes. Only his opera Der Corregidor (1896) was completed. Things went downhill from there. In 1897, Wolf had a nervous breakdown as a consequence of a syphilis infection he had since his teens. After a failed suicide attempt, he was admitted to a clinic in Vienna. The somber Michelangelo-Lieder (1898) would become his last completed composition. Wolf died in 1903, three weeks before his 43st birthday.