Die Winterreise by Klaus Mertens / Tini Mathot

Klaus Mertens / Tini Mathot

Die Winterreise

Price: € 12.95
Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917215229
Catnr: CC 72152
Release date: 21 November 2005
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Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917215229

Catalogue number
CC 72152

Release date
21 November 2005

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Of his output of over 600 songs that Schubert wrote, the two last and most important are the songcycles Die Schone Mullerin and die Winterreise, both written on poems by Wilhelm Muller. In early 1827 Schubert discovered in a magazine the cycle of twelve poems called "die Winterreise" and set them to music. When this was published the year after, Müller already died and probably never knew that his cycle of poems had been set to music by a certai Schubert, who was still alive and heard that Mœller had completed his cycle with another 12 poems. So he decided to set the new poems to music as well. He identified himself very much with this "cycle of frightful Lieder" as he called it. He never saw his mastewrwork published, as his own life journey finished shortly afterwards. Klaus Mertens manages to render this drama to its full extent, and a Rosenberger fortepiano is under the hands of Tini Mathot the most beautiful vehicle to bring this melancholy to sound.

Expressieve uitvoering van een beroemde liedcyclus
Van de meer dan 600 liederen die Schubert schreef, behoren de liedcycli Die Schone Mullerin en Die Winterreise tot de laatste en meest belangrijkste.

Begin 1827 ontdekte Schubert in een almanak een cyclus van twaalf gedichten van Wilhelm Muller, met als titel Die Winterreise. Schubert componeerde muziek bij de gedichten, die een jaar later gepubliceerd werd. Muller was toen al overleden, en wist waarschijnlijk niet dat zijn gedichten op muziek waren gezet door Schubert. Die had inmiddels gehoord dat Muller nog twaalf extra gedichten had geschreven om de cyclus compleet te maken, en componeerde ook muziek voor de nieuwe gedichten.

Schubert werd gefascineerd door het verlangen naar de dood, een thema dat als een rode draad door Die Winterreise heen loopt. Hij identificeerde zichzelf met deze "cyclus van angstaanjagende liederen", zoals hij het zelf noemde. Schubert leefde niet lang genoeg om de publicatie van de complete cyclus mee te maken. Zijn reis was voorbij.

Klaus Mertens en Tini Mathot gingen de uitdaging aan om Der Winterreise uit te voeren, met steun van Ton Koopman. Hun wens om de cyclus op te nemen werd groter toen ze de liederen speelden op de fortepiano van Mathot. Het is Mertens gelukt om dit drama in zijn volle omvang uit te voeren, en de Rosenberger fortepiano van Mathot is hiervoor het mooiste instrument om de melancholie te verklanken.

Artist(s)

Klaus Mertens

Bass-baritone Klaus Mertens is celebrated by the press for his 'unique expressiveness, his pleasant timbre, his sensitivity for words as well as his convincing music-making' and for being an 'excellent master of his Fach'. 'His interpretations of songs, cantatas and oratorios set standards.' Klaus Mertens’ unique characteristic is that he is the only singer worldwide to have sung and recorded the entire vocal oeuvre of both JS Bach and Buxtehude. These recordings, directed by Ton Koopman, continue to enjoy the highest international recognition. As 'one of the leading Telemann singers of our time', Klaus Mertens was awarded the Telemann-Preis of the city of Magdeburg in 2016. 'As the ideal conveyor of Bach’s cantatas and passion texts…' he received the renowned Bach-Medaille of...

Bass-baritone Klaus Mertens is celebrated by the press for his "unique expressiveness, his pleasant timbre, his sensitivity for words as well as his convincing music-making" and for being an "excellent master of his Fach". "His interpretations of songs, cantatas and oratorios set standards." Klaus Mertens’ unique characteristic is that he is the only singer worldwide to have sung and recorded the entire vocal oeuvre of both JS Bach and Buxtehude. These recordings, directed by Ton Koopman, continue to enjoy the highest international recognition.
As "one of the leading Telemann singers of our time", Klaus Mertens was awarded the Telemann-Preis of the city of Magdeburg in 2016. "As the ideal conveyor of Bach’s cantatas and passion texts…" he received the renowned Bach-Medaille of the city of Leipzig in 2019.

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Tini Mathot

Tini Mathot was born in Amsterdam. She studied piano and harpsichord at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory. She enjoys a close collaboration with her husband and former teacher Ton Koopman. Together they perform many popular and lesser known works, giving recitals and performing in chamber music projects in the major concert halls of Europe, the United States and Japan. Tini Mathot regularly appears as a soloist together with Ton Koopman in concertos for two (or more) harpsichords and orchestra. She has recorded double concertos of J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, J.F. Reichardt and C. Schaffrath with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Tini Mathot is a member of the Corelli Ensemble, whose members include Reine-Marie Verhagen. The ensemble was awarded the Diapason d’Or in France for...

Tini Mathot was born in Amsterdam. She studied piano and harpsichord at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory.
She enjoys a close collaboration with her husband and former teacher Ton Koopman. Together they perform many popular and lesser known works, giving recitals and performing in chamber music projects in the major concert halls of Europe, the United States and Japan. Tini Mathot regularly appears as a soloist together with Ton Koopman in concertos for two (or more) harpsichords and orchestra. She has recorded double concertos of J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, J.F. Reichardt and C. Schaffrath with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
Tini Mathot is a member of the Corelli Ensemble, whose members include Reine-Marie Verhagen. The ensemble was awarded the Diapason d’Or in France for its recording of Haydn trios (with Andrew Manze and Jaap ter Linden), issued by Erato. The CD recording of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’, sung by the baritone Klaus Mertens with Tini Mathot playing an original Rosenberger fortepiano, was released in 2005, followed by a recording of J.S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas with Reine-Marie Verhagen (recorder) and Tini Mathot (organ and harpsichord) in 2008, both CDs issued by Challenge Classics.
In her capacity as producer for Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir and also for other ensembles, Tini Mathot has produced numerous CDs for Erato, Teldec and Antoine Marchand/Challenge Classics, among other labels. She is the producer of the complete series of Bach cantatas by Ton Koopman and the ABO&C as well as the Opera Omnia of Dieterich Buxtehude, which Ton Koopman is currently working on. In addition to these activities Tini Mathot teaches harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.  Tini Mathot plays on a fortepiano by Mathias Müller, Vienna c. 1810 (with a range of 6 octaves FF-f4, an Empire-style case with bronze fittings and Caryatid legs), from the collection of Edwin Beunk, Enschede (NL). The instrument is typical of the Viennese building style around 1810. Mathias Müller had a reputation as an innovator with regard to instruments and was ‘Kaiserlich-Königlich priviligiert’.

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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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