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Walter Braunfels: Grosse Messe op. 37
PHILHARMONISCHER CHOR BERLIN · BERLINER SINGAKADEMIE · KNABEN DES STAATS- UND DOMCHORES BERLIN · KONZERTHAUSORCHESTER BERLIN · JÖRG-PETER WEIGLE
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ANTON BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 9 · Mass No. 3
WIENER SINGAKADEMIE · RSO VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · CORNELIUS MEISTER
What a struggle the work posed for the composer emerges from the circumstance that he already embarked on it in the late summer of 1887, but had not completed it by his death nine years later. If we take the existing music of the Ninth to hand, we will notice that only few symphonies evince such apparently ‘autonomous’ movements as this one – perhaps this very fact is a consequence of the absence of a finale rounding off the arch and concluding the dramaturgy. If Bruckner intended to dedicate the Ninth to ‘my dear God’, the Mass in F minor is a work of gratitude to God for recovery after a persistent nervous illness and physical exhaustion. Performed several times during Bruckner’s lifetime, the Mass in F minor has uninterruptedly ranked ahead of its sister works in D minor and E minor among the popular church choral works of late Romanticism.
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Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967)
JÖRG STRODTHOFF, organ · DEUTSCHES SYMPHONIE-ORCHESTER BERLIN · GERD ALBRECHT
Even it is a legend that the Prague-born composer Jaromir Weinberger committed suicide in American exile because he had not succeeded for decades in following up his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper with any of his later works. Nevertheless, the legend contains a grain of truth. It shows a 71-year-old composer far away from his beloved homeland, which he had had to leave in the course of its occupation by the Nazis and which was meanwhile ruled by the Communists under Soviet influence. But in general, Weinberger was just as little able to integrate in North American music life as he managed to draw on his earlier time in Europe after 1945. A consideration of many works by Weinberger today will have to take events of the time into account, but at the same time we will hardly be able to avoid seeing direct or indirect references to his one big success Schwanda the Bagpiper in many works.
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STEPHANIE HOUTZEEL: Nostalgia
Stephanie Houtzeel, mezzo-soprano · Charles Spencer, piano
‘I am neither an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world’, Socrates is said to have uttered. He described himself as a cosmopolitan. A cosmopolitan was somebody who wanted to annul the dichotomy between being a polis member and a polis non-member by positioning himself in the overarching order of the cosmos. Along these lines, the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel may, of course, describe herself as a cosmopolitan. Born in Kassel, she was raised in the vicinity of Boston, where she initially studied political science and French, then music at the New England Conservatory and the Juillard School in New York (she was the first winner of Juilliard’s Vocal Arts Debut Award). Since the autumn of 2010, she has been a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera. So, the dramaturgically meticulously composed programme of her first recital should be viewed as being cosmopolitan. It is a journey through three stations, three world metropolises, Vienna, New York and Buenos Aires.
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ANNE SCHWANEWILMS - SCHÖNE WELT -
Anne Schwanewilms, soprano · Charles Spencer, piano
With his personality characterized by emotional extremes, Franz Schubert was in no position to evoke a perfectly wonderful world in his songs. On the contrary, in his compositions he challenged any fine illusion with a subtle and sensual touch. Unlike Franz Schubert, for a long time Franz Schreker managed to create an idyllic, wonderful and successful world with his compositions. Sometimes, he was even more successful as a composer than Richard Strauss, to the latter’s great chagrin. But then the Nazis came. Wonderful world, where are you?
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, he, too, a Jew, fled to the ‘brave new world’, to America.
Korngold achieved great fame with his film scores, but on the screen, everything is only a (fine) illusion.
Anne Schwanewilms
