LICHT! 800 Years of German Lied by Anna Lucia Richter

Anna Lucia Richter | Ammiel Bushakevitz

LICHT! 800 Years of German Lied

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917296525
Catnr: CC 72965
Release date: 06 October 2023
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Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917296525

Catalogue number
CC 72965

Release date
06 October 2023

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

With the present programme we want to explore the history of the German Lied throughout a period spanning some 800 years, from that first light of dawn represented by the earliest music scored with modern notation - courtly love songs by Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445) - down to such present-day emissaries of the Lied tradition as Aribert Reimann and Wolfgang Rihm.
In between we find: J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, F.Hensel, Wolf, Berg and Eisler.

The programme is rounded off, however, by the work of a political exile, Kurt Weill: namely, Berlin im Licht. This work appears initially to be no more than a love-song to the future of the electric light bulb: “Turn on the light; so you can see what’s wrong and what is right”. The deeper meaning was soon thrown into relief by the blotting out, within a few years of its composition, of both the light and the right to which Kurt Weill aspired and Germany’s swift descent into the darkness of dictatorship and war. A spark, however, still remained.

Mit dem vorliegenden Programm wollen wir die Geschichte des deutschen Liedes über einen Zeitraum von rund 800 Jahren erkunden, von der ersten Dämmerung, die die früheste, modern notierte Musik darstellt - höfische Liebeslieder von Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) und Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445) - bis hin zu heutigen Vertretern der Liedtradition wie Aribert Reimann und Wolfgang Rihm.
Dazwischen finden wir: J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, F.Hensel, Wolf, Berg und Eisler.

Abgerundet wird das Programm jedoch durch das Werk eines politischen Exilanten, Kurt Weill: nämlich Berlin im Licht. Dieses Werk scheint zunächst nicht mehr zu sein als ein Liebeslied an die Zukunft der Glühbirne: "Mach das Licht an, damit du siehst, was falsch und was richtig ist". Der tiefere Sinn wurde bald durch die Auslöschung sowohl des Lichts als auch des Rechts, nach dem Kurt Weill strebte, innerhalb weniger Jahre nach der Komposition und durch den raschen Abstieg Deutschlands in die Dunkelheit von Diktatur und Krieg entlarvt. Ein Funke blieb jedoch bestehen.

Artist(s)

Anna Lucia Richter (mezzo soprano)

Anna Lucia Richter is a welcome guest as concert and opera singer all around the world. Recently she has worked with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst (Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion) and has often sung under that of Teodor Currentzis with the ensemble MusicAeterna in, among other works, Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, on tour with works of Gustav Mahler, and as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the 2021 Salzburg Festspiele. She has also made regular appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, with Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini, with the Orchestre de Paris under Thomas Hengelbrock, with the Gewandhausorchester under Philippe Herreweghe, and with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer. She has several times sung as guest artist with these famous ensembles at such great festivals as the Lucerne Festival, the BBC Proms in London and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, as well as having been artist-in-residence both at the Rheingau Music Festival and with the Cologne Philharmonia. This highly accomplished artist has been rewarded with many prizes, including the very prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. In 2020, under the guidance of Prof. Tamar Rachum, she began a musical retraining as a mezzo soprano. An important step which opened up new possibilities for her worldwide. It allowed her, for example, to give, in 2021, a guest performance of Mahler’s Wunderhorn-Lieder under the baton of Ádám Fischer in Düsseldorf and to take on, in 2022, the alto part in Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 with the Bamberg Symphony under Jakub Hrůša in Bamberg, 14 15 Vienna and Baden-Baden, as well as the alto solo in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin led by Iván Fischer. Also in the field of opera performance this vocal transition proved very successful: In December 2021 at the Cologne Opera she gave, under the baton of F.-X. Roth, her debut performance as Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. At the beginning of 2023 she received much acclaim for her performance in the title role in Offenbach’s La Périchole at the Theater an der Wien and sang, shortly afterward, again in Cologne the role of Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. In the field of Lied performance Anna Lucia Richter is, thanks to her broad repertoire, a welcome guest in all the great centres of this musical art: for example at the Schwarzenberg and Vilabertran “Schubertiads”, at the Rheingau Music Festival, at the Heidelberger Frühling, at New York’s Park Avenue Armory and Carnegie Hall, and in London’s Wigmore Hall.

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Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano)

Ammiel Bushakevitz piano Born in Jerusalem, Israel, and raised in South Africa, Ammiel Bushakevitz began playing piano at the age of four. A citizen of the Israel, the USA and South Africa, he has performed in venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Shanghai City Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Berlin Konzerthaus. He has appeared at the festivals in Salzburg, Aix-enProvence, Bayreuth, Granada, Lucerne, Cape Town, Milan, Heidelberg, Rome, Vancouver, Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Beijing and Montreal; and the Schubertiades in Schwarzenberg, Hohenems, Vilabertran and Jerusalem. Ammiel Bushakevitz studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig and the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique in Paris under Phillip Moll and Alfred Brendel. He also studied fortepiano under Malcolm Bilson and Robert Levin. One of the last private students of the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Ammiel was invited in 2011 by Fischer-Dieskau to accompany his Lieder masterclasses at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and at the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade in Austria. He is a top prize-winner at numerous competitions, including the Wigmore Hall Competition in London, the Schubert Competition in Stuttgart, the Johannes Brahms Competition in Austria, the Hugo Wolf Competition in Stuttgart, the Prix International Pro Musicis in Paris as well as the Concours Léopold Bellan. Passionate about education, Ammiel Bushakevitz has presented masterclasses in universities and conservatories in the USA, Australia, Spain, Germany and China. He dedicates time to mentoring aspiring young musicians in developing countries and has offered music workshops and benefit concerts in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Mexico, Morocco and Zimbabwe. Ammiel Bushakevitz is a member of the Société des Arts Sciences et Lettres de Paris and Edison Fellow of the British Library, London. He is artistic director of the International Arts Association Les Voix d’Orphée in Paris, France.

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Composer(s)

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert already died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities engendered by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Schubert expanded the potentialities of the genre like no other composer before.

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Alban Berg

Alban Berg was an Austrian composer. Berg studied from 1904 to 1910 under Arnold Schoenberg and together with his teacher and fellow student Anton Webern he is part of the Second Viennese School. Berg married with Helene Nahowski (1885-1976), a singer who was a daughter from Anna Nahowski and, allegedly, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. At first, Berg applied a free atonality, but later he started developing strict twelve tone techniques and combined these to a style which, despite its expressionistic character, reminds of the Late Romantic music of Gustav Mahler.

At first, Berg applied a free atonality, but later he started developing strict twelve tone techniques and combined these to a style which, despite its expressionistic character, reminds of the Late Romantic music of Gustav Mahler.

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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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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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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose actual name is Joannes Chrysotomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a composer, pianist, violinist and conductor from the classical period, born in Salzburg. Mozart was a child prodigy. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart is considered to be one of the most influential composers of all of music's history. Within the classical tradition, he was able to develop new musical concepts which left an everlasting impression on all the composers that came after him. Together with Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven he is part of the First Viennese School. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position. From 1763 he traveled with his family through all of Europe for three years and from 1769 he traveled to Italy and France with his father Leopold after which he took residence in Paris. On July 3rd, 1778, his mother passed away and after a short stay in Munich with the Weber family, his father urged him to return to Salzburg, where he was once again hired by the Bishop. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death.

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Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor, two Passions, and hundreds of cantatas. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

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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.

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Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad 'Mack the Knife'. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. He also wrote several works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.

Kurt Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife".
Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. He also wrote several works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.

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Oswald von Wolkenstein

Oswald von Wolkenstein was a German composer whose music bridged the Medieval and Renaissance eras; the last of the poet-musician knights whose monophonic music explored the ideal of courtly love, he also wrote polyphonic music in more contemporary forms. As noble "von" indicates, Oswald was from a knightly family of the Villanders line. The surname "von Wolkenstein" comes from the name of their property of Wolkenstein in Groednertal, South Tyrol (a mountainous Austrian province that was taken by Italy in World War II). As he was of high birth, there is some information available about his life; key events were written in family archives. Still, as is the norm with composers of the day, there are numerous gaps that can be filled in only imperfectly by extrapolation from his works. Oswald was a second son, which put him at a disadvantage, but also gave him freedom to pursue an adventurous life, and to enter the political sphere. He spent his youth as a page in service, which took him to various countries and gave him fluency in several languages. He became a diplomat for the league of Tyrolean nobles and for Emperor Sigismund and took part in several German councils.

His seat was Hauenstein castle near Bolzano, but in 1407 he inherited only part of Hauenstein itself, and spent the rest of his life in a property dispute with the other tenant, the family of Martin Jaeger. As a result of this dispute, and also because of political intrigues, he was imprisoned several times. Nevertheless, he fell in love with Anna Hausmann, the daughter of one of his adversaries in this dispute. He wrote several love poems to her, continuing even after his marriage to Margarete von Schwangau in 1417. He also wrote poems addressed to a "Barbara," but fortunately did not neglect to write love poetry addressed to his wife.

Oswald himself preserved a quantity of his own in two manuscripts designated "A" and "B." There is also a manuscript "C" that contains text but no music, and a few other sources. His songs are typically in AABB form, with arched, flowing melodic lines. There are some exceptions, such as Es komen neue mer gerant, which is a description of a military raid in northern Italy and is written in an almost parlando style, scoffing at the losers.

Oswald's poetry often drew on events he himself experienced or witnessed. The unusual fit between text and musical line in his music inspired a description of him as the "creator of the individual lied," which is ahistorical. Nor was he, as has sometimes been said, a Meistersinger, the German counterpart to the French troubador or trouvère. His music includes not only monophonic songs but also polyphony in three or four parts. Towards the end of his life he composed religious music in simple textures.

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Fanny Hensel

Wolfgang Rihm

Hanns Eisler

Aribert Reimann

Joseph Haydn

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets 'Father of the Symphony' and 'Father of the String Quartet'. Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, 'forced to become original'. Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart,...

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, with whom he formed the First Viennese School. He was also the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

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