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Lieder by Wolf and Brahms
Hugo Wolf, Johannes Brahms

Alastair Miles

Lieder by Wolf and Brahms

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212036921
Catnr: SIGCD 369
Release date: 10 March 2014
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212036921
Catalogue number
SIGCD 369
Release date
10 March 2014
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
NL

About the album

Alastair Miles is internationally recognised as one of the world’s leading basses, appearing regularly with acclaimed opera companies such as WNO, Glyndebourne, ENO and the Royal Opera, as well as with conductors such as Giulini, Harnoncourt, Muti, Rattle, Gergiev, Gardiner, Norrington, Davis and Dohnanyi. On this new recording he explores some gems of the Lieder repertoire from Hugo Wolf and Johannes Brahms, ably accompanied by pianist Marie-Nöelle Kendall.

Juweeltjes van Brahms en Wolf uitgevoerd door vermaarde bas
Alastair Miles wordt internationaal erkend als een van de meest vooraanstaande bassen ter wereld. Hij treedt regelmatig op met hooggewaardeerde operagezelschappen zoals de Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne, English National Opera en de Royal Opera, onder dirigenten als Giulini, Harnoncourt, Muti, Rattle, Gergiev, Gardiner, Norrington, Davis en Dohnanyi. Op dit album verkent hij enkele juweeltjes uit het Liederrepertoire van Hugo Wolf en Johannes Brahms, op kundige wijze begeleid door pianist Marie-Noëlle Kendall.

Miles zelf schreef over het album: “De kern van het album wordt zeker gevormd door de 'Michelangelo Lieder' [van Wolf] en de Vier ernste Gesänge van Brahms. Ik heb ze al sinds lange tijd willen opnemen. (…) De overeenkomsten tussen de twee sets van liederen fascineerden mij ook. Zoals Natasha Loges zinspeelt in haar inleiding tot het programma, de teksten van beide sets liederen zijn monumentaal in hun uitspraken over de toestand van de mens en sterk agnostisch van karakter, wat verontrustend is gelet op het feit dat de teksten van Brahms uit de Bijbel afkomstig zijn! Het feit dat beide liederencycli de allerlaatste werken waren die de componisten schreven – in hetzelfde jaar! – was ook te toevallig om te negeren: ik speelde zelfs een tijdje met het idee om het album Famous Last Words te noemen!”

Composer(s)

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...
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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...
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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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