Melodramas by Isabelle Vogt / Lars Vogt

Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss

Isabelle Vogt / Lars Vogt

Melodramas

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085532049
Catnr: AVI 8553204
Release date: 04 February 2022
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085532049

Catalogue number
AVI 8553204

Release date
04 February 2022

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

You have to Let Yourself become Part of the Momanet…..

Isabelle and Lars Vogt in conversation with Friederike Westerhaus

What gave you the idea to record these works together?

Isabelle: It was originally Papa’s idea. Ever since the age of four, I have been involved in acting and reciting. Until now we had only worked on recitation combined with music – but then he stumbled upon the musical melodramas of Robert Schumann. I didn’t even know what a melodrama was!

What is a musical melodrama?

Lars: In Schumann’s case, the subtitle on the frontispiece says “Declamation with pianoforte accompaniment”: we thus have a theatrical element. And whenever the piano joins in, we not only have the spoken word but also a musical background, at times directly placed under the text – and the music has an influence on the declamation.

The choice of musical melodramas is rather large: what were your reasons for selecting these?

Lars: By chance, I knew of these two Schumann melodramas: the Ballad of the Heathland Lad and The Refugees, and I was also aware that they had a menacing, spooky atmosphere. That was around the time when Isabelle was 15-16 years old. She loved the Harry Potter saga, for instance, and I said to myself: these are stories and moods in which Isabelle can really get cracking: the content is slightly gory and scary. I was certain she would have fun with them.

Isabelle, did you find that this was the kind of setting where you could feel that you were “in your element”?

Isabelle: Absolutely! For instance, I always found Schubert and Goethe’s Erlkönig fascinating, and these ballads are quite similar in terms of mood. I remember getting goosebumps the first time I heard Schumann’s Heideknaben. At first, I found it strange to get used to such an interplay between music and the spoken word. I had never heard anything like it before.
(Excerpt from interview in the Booklet)

Man muss in dem Moment reingehen.....
Isabelle und Lars Vogt im Gespräch mit Friederike Westerhaus

Wie seid Ihr darauf gekommen, diese Werke zusammen aufzunehmen?
I: Die Idee kam ursprünglich von Papa. Ich beschäftige mich, seit ich vier Jahre alt bin, mit Schauspiel. Vorher
hatten wir nur Rezitation mit Musik zusammen gemacht. Und er kam plötzlich auf die Melodramen von Robert
Schumann. Ich wusste gar nicht, was ein Melodram ist.

Was macht ein Melodram aus?

L: Bei Schumann steht vorne drauf „Deklamation mit Begleitung des Pianofortes“. Es hat also schon eine
schauspielerische Komponente. Und in dem Moment, wo ein Klavier dabei ist, ist es nicht mehr nur Sprechen,
sondern da ist eine Klangkulisse zum Teil auch direkt unter dem Text, die das Sprechen beeinflusst.

Es gibt ja eine ganze Reihe Melodramen, warum habt Ihr Euch für diese entschieden?
L: Ich kannte diese beiden Schumann-Melodramen – die „Ballade vom Heideknaben“ und „Die Flüchtlinge“
zufällig, und wusste, dass das so eine gruselige, spukige Welt ist. Das war die Zeit, wo Isabelle 15-16 war und
zum Beispiel völlig in „Harry Potter“ aufging. Und ich dachte mir, das ist genau ihre Welt, wo sie so richtig
loslegen kann, leicht blutrünstig und ein bisschen gefährlich. Ich dachte, das würde ihr bestimmt Spaß machen.

Ist das eine Welt gewesen, in die Du Dich sofort hineinfinden konntest, Isabelle?

I: Total! Ich fand auch den „Erlkönig“ immer total faszinierend. Und das ist ziemlich ähnlich von der Atmosphäre
her. Ich weiß noch, dass ich richtig Gänsehaut hatte, als ich den „Heideknaben“ zum ersten Mal gehört habe. Am
Anfang war es etwas seltsam reinzukommen in dieses Zusammenspiel von Sprechen und Musik. Das hatte ich noch nie vorher gehört. (aus dem Booklet-Interview)

Artist(s)

Lars Vogt (piano)

Born in the German town of Düren in 1970, Lars Vogt has established himself as one of the leading pianists of his generation. By winning Second Prize at Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990 he launched a remarkable career that has led him to concertize in all the major classical music venues worldwide. Vogt not only performs as solo pianist and as a chamber musician, but also increasingly as a conductor. He took up the post of Music Director of Royal Nothern Sinfonia in Newcastle (England).
Highlights of Lars Vogt's 2015/2016 season include concerts with the LSO, CBSO, Schottish Chamber and Hallé, with the Bavarian Radio SO, Orchestre de Paris etc. In the US he played with Baltimore Symphony and St. Louis Symphony and toured extensively with the Tetzlaff siblings as well as in Japan.
With his passion for chamber music, Lars Vogt has become the professional partner and friend of many first-rate musicians in the classical music field. As the founder and artistic director of SPANNUNGEN Chamber Music Festival he has fulfilled a long-held dream. In 2007 he received the Annual German Music Critics Circle Award for the collected live recordings of Heimbach performances from 1999 to 2006.
As an EMI recording artist, Lars Vogt made fifteen discs for the label, including collaborations with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado and with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle. Recent releases on other labels include Mozart piano concertos with Frankfurt RSO (Paavo Järvi), a solo CD with works by Liszt and Schumann, and two duo CDs and a successsful trio CD. Especially his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations received rave reviews.
Lars Vogt is the founder of “Rhapsody In School”, an acclaimed educational initiative with important reper-cussions in Germany and abroad. The project presented its featured artists as “Rhapsody In Concert” for the first time at the Konzerthaus in Berlin in 2012. That same year, Lars Vogt was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hannover Conservatory of Music.

Lars died September 5th 2022

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Isabelle Vogt (vocals)

Born in 2002 in Berlin, Isabelle Vogt cultivated a passion for theater and drama since early childhood, and today she remains faithful to her vocation in a multitude of activities. In 2013, in Berlin, she started attending the Goldoni Drama School, where she now teaches. Isabelle has participated in a number of theater performances in her native city (with the companies Theaterkollektiv Dokumentartheater Berlin, Theater 28, Grips Theater Youth Club, and others), and she has played roles in television series produced by Sky and Amazon Prime. She has also appeared as narrator in radio feature productions recorded and broadcast by Deutschlandfunk. In view of her musical background, Isabelle has always held a particular interest for narration, recitation, and melodrama programs in collaboration...

Isabelle has participated in a number of theater performances in her native city (with the companies Theaterkollektiv Dokumentartheater Berlin, Theater 28, Grips Theater Youth Club, and others), and she has played roles in television series produced by Sky and Amazon Prime. She has also appeared as narrator in radio feature productions recorded and broadcast by Deutschlandfunk.

In view of her musical background, Isabelle has always held a particular interest for narration, recitation, and melodrama programs in collaboration with musicians, as on this recording with her father.

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Composer(s)

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.
In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, against the wishes of her father, following a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favour of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which, before her marriage, formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of ‘exaltation’ and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with "psychotic melancholia", Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental illness.

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Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; his tone poems, including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and An Alpine Symphony; and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen and his Oboe Concerto. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; his tone poems, including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and An Alpine Symphony; and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen and his Oboe Concerto. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

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