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Liederkreis

Anna Lucia Richter | Michael Gees

Liederkreis

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917268720
Catnr: CC 72687
Release date: 17 November 2015
1 CD
 
Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917268720
Catalogue number
CC 72687
Release date
17 November 2015

"(...)  really feel a symbiosis with Michael and with the audience (...)"

Luister, 01-12-2016
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
Press
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About the album

“But if there is such a thing as a sense of reality – and no one will doubt that is has its raison d’être – then there must also be something that one can call a sense of possibility. Anyone possessing it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen. He uses his imagination and says: Here such and such might, should or ought to happen. And if he is told that something is the way it is, then he thinks: Well, it could probably just as easily be some other way. So the sense of possibility might be defined outright as the capacity to think how everything could ‘just as easily’ be, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.” (from: Robert Musil, The man without qualities. Translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser)

What is improvisation? In large part, if not indeed predominantly, a sense of possibility: that a song is sleeping in all things. And faith in the inexhaustible richness of manifestation and proliferation. And courage not merely to repeat the tried and true, but to return to it, perhaps to acknowledge, even be shocked by, its continuing newness. And trust. We can already make a beginning with what we can offer each other in atmosphere and motive, and recognise and support what that seeks to become. Will without aim, like Atreyu at the No-Key Gate in Michael Ende’s Neverending Story: that is improvisation.

We have named our programme Liederkreis, although it certainly breaks the bounds of Schumann’s op. 39 cycle. We know from Robert’s letters to Clara that the poems he set were favourites of them both, and an extremely idiosyncratic compilation it is too. Unlike Dichterliebe, this cycle does not present a straightforward narration. Nonetheless, it pleased Eichendorff: in the poet’s own words, it was Schumann’s music that brought his poems to life. His ‘most Romantic music of all’, as Robert described the op. 39 cycle to Clara, became so sanctified in the 20th century that it seemed as though Robert Schumann had composed his Mondnacht to inhibit us in our own imaginative response, instead of it being intended, like all his songs, as a stimulating contribution, meant to inspire joy in pure performance, to the evening entertainments presented by such artists as Julius Stockhausen and Clara Schumann – far more colourful occasions, musically speaking, than many of the sometimes sterile Liederabende of decades gone by.

As things stand, modern musicology is in the process of giving its sanction to creative relationships with past repertoires and their forms of presentation. It is thus nothing sacrilegious if we just for once relieve Schumann’s work of its heritage protection in favour of letting ourselves be led by our “most Romantic” sense of the possible.

We consider the Eichendorff settings as a succession of songs, linked with a dreamer’s logic, that is not merely associative in itself but also leaves room for further associations and the development of their potential.

In this way we have imagined, between the songs, spaces for further ideas and elements. Folk songs, for example. One might well wonder why – we certainly have. Because Robert Schumann already in his own time perceived a growing chasm between the musically educated and the likes of you and me? Because he conjured up, perhaps despite his own doubts, a communal artwork of the people; because he struggled for a folk-like naturalness, the so-called “Volkston”, even if according to his own judgement his struggle was not exactly successful?
It is no easy matter to account for one’s ideas…

And yet we wish to make an honest attempt. So, folk songs it is. Brahms’s arrangements were an obvious choice, Brahms being in a way Schumann’s foster son. But what does Britten’s bittersweet, harmonically ambiguous view of the folk song have to do with Schumann? Or with Eichendorff? Does it touch us that the composer, temporarily resident in America in 1942, took up the songs of his embattled homeland? Or, more broadly, how the visionary, poetic concept of homeland in folk song, art song, and their corresponding poetry miraculously blurs with reality? Does the term ‘Romantic’ denote not so much an epoch as an attitude, namely, that of openness for the spiritual reality behind manifestation? “And my soul spread wide its wings, flew through the silent lands as if it were flying home.” Surely we all share this longing, as much now as 200 years ago.

And so we too have spread the wings of our soul and taken a creative role while letting ourselves be led by echo and anticipation. What must we do for the songs of yesteryear so that they may reach us? The sentiment of the soul’s readiness for death is of course much harder to evoke today than it was in the past. The anticipation of the imminent “time of silence” (“Stille Zeit” – In der Fremde I) requires preparatory attunement, a sense of the preciousness of silence in an all too clamorous time. Even the very first sentence, “From my homeland, behind the red flashes of lightning, come the clouds” all too easily evades our souls, as illuminated and deprived of magic as they are. This is not how we contemporaries think. We have no wish to know a world we cannot see.

It is with such thoughts in mind that we wandered, hearkening, from song to song, choosing, rejecting, and eventually deciding on this or that poem for spontaneous musical setting. Improvisations came into being in a spirit of trust for creative, collaborative listening – snapshots, uncut, unrepeatable, intended as sincere contributions to a living whole, captured in a process of development.

We were thankful and felt ourselves encouraged when, for example, after Schumann’s Wehmut (Melancholy) we could call on Brahms’s arrangement of the folk song Da drunten im Tale (Down there in the valley), that can only have arisen out of the courage (‘Mut’) to feel sorrow (‘Weh’), or when Schumann’s Schöne Fremde found such a direct echo in Britten’s How Sweet the Answer.

Theodor Adorno, who sought to assert the deep dramaturgical coherence of the op. 39 Lieder, nonetheless allowed doubt to creep in near the end of his consideration of the cycle. “Zwielicht attains, as the poem demands, the centre of gravity of the whole, the deepest, darkest point of feeling. Its echoes colour the eleventh song, the vision of the hunt Im Walde. Finally, in starkest contrast to the whole cycle, the uplifting Frühlingsnacht.”

In starkest contrast? One might just as well say: there is a connection missing. We have entrusted Eichendorff’s madly trembling Nachtwanderer with the task of taking the pioneering leap from here to the beyond. From shuddering in the face of the void (“…all sound died away”) to rejoicing in communion with the essential (“She is yours!”) it is indeed a long way…

Spring 2015, Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees

Translation: Carl Rosman/Muse Translations
Improvisatie in een klassiek genre door een sopraan en een pianist
Dit is het debuutalbum van Anna Lucia Richter, een van de meest opmerkelijke sopranen van het laatste decennium. Samen met pianist Michael Gees voert ze de beroemde Liederkreis op. 39 van Schumann uit.

De liederen uit Schumanns werk worden gecombineerd met liederen van Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, en improvisaties op de gedichten van Eichendorff. Elk lied is met andere liederen verbonden door zijn sfeer, onderwerp en muzikale identiteit. Deze combinatie van liederen vormt een organische liedcyclus, een Liederkreis.

Richter en Gees schreven over hun album: “Ons programma heet Liederkreis, ook al overschrijdt het de grenzen van Schumanns cyclus. De cyclus bestaat uit een opeenvolging van liederen, verbonden door de logica van een dromer. Deze logica is niet slechts associatief op zichzelf, maar laat ook ruimte over voor nieuwe associaties.”

“Op deze manier hebben we ruimte voor nieuwe ideeën en elementen tussen de liederen bedacht, bijvoorbeeld volksliederen. De bewerkingen van Brahms waren een duidelijke keuze. Maar wat heeft Brittens bitterzoete visie op het volkslied met Schumann of met Eichendorff te maken? Slaat de term Romantiek niet vooral op een houding, namelijk die van openheid voor de spirituele werkelijkheid achter de manifestatie? Met zulke gedachten in ons hoofd dwaalden we van lied naar lied, om uiteindelijk te beslissen welk gedicht geschikt was voor improvisatie.”

“Die 22-Jährige singt das mit bezwingender Reife; sie lässt uns vollständig wissen, dass sie begreift, was sie singt. Dabei hilft ihr ein Sopran, der in der Höhe butterblumenhaft hell und süß leuchtet und in der Tiefe mitnichten versackt, sondern immer noch Volumen und Glanz hat.“ Rheinische Post, 2012

Drei Jahre später legt Anna Lucia Richter zusammen mit Michael Gees nun ihre Solodebüt-CD bei Challenge Classics vor. Um Schumanns Liederkreis haben sie ein außergewöhnliches Programm mit Lieder im Volkston von Brahms und Britten sowie Extempore gestaltet.

“Wir nennen unser Programm Liederkreis, obwohl es den Kreis des von Robert Schumann komponierten op.39 sprengt. So haben wir uns zwischen seinen Liedern Freiräume vorgestellt, in die etwas einfallen durfte. Volkslieder zum Beispiel. Nahe lagen natürlich Brahms' Bearbeitungen, schließlich war der junge Brahms eine Art Ziehsohn Schumanns gewesen. Unter solchen Gedanken sind wir gleichsam horchend von Lied zu Lied gegangen, haben ausgewählt und verworfen und uns für dieses oder jenes Gedicht zur Spontanvertonung entschieden. Improvisationen sind entstanden im Vertrauen auf schöpferisches, mitwirkendes Hören, Momentaufnahmen, ungeschnitten, unwiederholbar: als aufrichtige Beiträge zu einem lebendigen, in Entwicklung begriffenem Ganzen.
Wir waren dankbar und fühlten uns bestärkt, wenn etwa im Gefolge der Schumannschen Wehmut ein von Johannes Brahms arrangiertes Volkslied (Da drunten im Tale) zur Hand war, das kaum anders als aus dem Mut zum Weh entstanden sein dürfte oder wenn Schumanns Schöne Fremde in Brittens How sweet the answer so bruchlos nachklingt.”
Anna Lucia Richter & Michael Gees

2015 ist ein vielversprechendes Jahr für Anna Lucia Richter. Neben ihrem Debüt beim Heidelberger Frühling stand sie mit Bernhard Haitink beim Lucene Festival und gemeinsam mit dem London Symphony Orchestra in London und Tokio auf der Bühne, gastierte mit András Schiff in San Francisco und Los Angeles. Im November 2015 wird sie unter anderem unter dem Dirigat von Iván Fischer in der h-moll-Messe zu hören sein. In Essen wird sie erstmals als Pamina zu erleben sein, sowie weiterhin als Eurydice und Musica in Sascha Waltzs Inszenierung des L'Orfeo.

Artist(s)

Michael Gees (piano)

'Throughout the evening Gees played as if he had composed the pieces himself and was therefore extremely vigilant to make sure the performance was carried out according to his inner ear. His eyes were not those of an artist intent on reproduction, but  shone rather a lambent look of passion, just as one might imagine the composer as the creator.“ N. Campogrande Michael Gees’ biography certainly justifies the term: exceptional. Few others can claim to have a career already behind them at the tender age of fifteen: Born in 1953 into a world of sound and music, both parents are singers, the piano is his favourite toy at age three. Formal piano lessons follow at age five, and the young musician subsequently goes...
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"Throughout the evening Gees played as if he had composed the pieces himself and was therefore extremely vigilant to make sure the performance was carried out according to his inner ear. His eyes were not those of an artist intent on reproduction, but shone rather a lambent look of passion, just as one might imagine the composer as the creator.“ N. Campogrande Michael Gees’ biography certainly justifies the term: exceptional. Few others can claim to have a career already behind them at the tender age of fifteen: Born in 1953 into a world of sound and music, both parents are singers, the piano is his favourite toy at age three. Formal piano lessons follow at age five, and the young musician subsequently goes on to win the Steinway Competition at age eight and receives a scholarship at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
The child prodigy is hailed as “Westphalian Mozart“, takes up studies at the conservatories in Detmold and Vienna and it seems as if he is fast on his way to become an internationally acclaimed pianist. Were it not for the gifted child’s longing to explore the world of sound on his own terms, to playfully experience his self like the great masters’ music, to invent their music all over again, note for note instead of limiting himself to a technical practice regimen. Michael Gees flees the pressure of a predetermined competitional career at the age of fifteen, leaves school, conservatory and home behind, supports himself through odd jobs, works as archeological assistant and, in the process, for the duration of two full years, becomes a sailor.
Chance leads him back to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, where he resumes his compositional studies and eventually graduates. He now develops first rate pianistic chops on his own, composes a number of works, gains international renown as lied accompanist of extraordinary proportions with Christoph Prégardien and also appears in concerts globally; in Paris, London, New York and Tokio. All the while, he nurses and feeds his preference for combining the performance of music of past masters with living inspiration, thereby creating remarkable performances with his instrument.
In 1989, Gees founds “forum kunstvereint“ in his adopted hometown of Gelsenkirchen; the Consol Theater, also installed by him, opens its doors in 2001 on the confines of the former mining area Consolidation. There, music, dance and theatre projects take shape, where children, youths and adults alike are incited and encouraged to discover and realize their own artistic impulses. A steady number of CDs have been released from 1996 onward on forum kunstvereint, CPO and EMI, showcasing Michael Gees’ range.
Since 2008 Michael Gees is associated to the Netherlands label Challenge Classics. The 2009 release of the Schöne Müllerin with Christoph Prégardien won the MIDEM Classical Award and became Recording of the Year. Michael Gees works on solo-recitals which enjoy breaking with tradition, on modernized lied-renditions, melodramas and stage music.

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Anna Lucia Richter (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...
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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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Composer(s)

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with...
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Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with the legendary cellist Rostropovich led to a Cello sonata, three Suites for cello solo and a Symphony for Cello and orchestra in the 1960s.

Britten never became Master of the Queen's Music, yet he surely had feeling for public sentiments. For example, as a pacifist, he taught his people about world peace through his War Requiem from 1962. Britten was an excellent interpreter of his own work, just like Bartók and Stravinsky. Many of his recordings have been matched, but never exceeded.


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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...
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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...
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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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Press

(...)  really feel a symbiosis with Michael and with the audience (...)
Luister, 01-12-2016

"When I could pre-sing by Haitink, I picked the notes from internet and took a taxi, "
De Volkskrant, 25-10-2016

From the jury report: "You need to have courage: diversify a song recital with improvisations. Anna Lucia Richter, the upcomming German soprano, enters convinsing with her debute album."
Edison Nomination, 19-10-2016

Channel Classics
, 22-6-2016

Ihr Opernratgeber / 06-05-2016
Ihr Opernratgeber, 06-5-2016

"What a rarity! Anna Lucia Richter is a singer with a mind of her own and this is her benefit."
niusic, 08-4-2016

"The songs all bath in an enigmatic, sensitive atmosphere, breathe nostalgia and melancholy. The piano accompaniment is soft-romantic, but at the same time contemporary-sober, which the voice supports."
Klassiek Centraal, 06-3-2016

"...one can only be enchanted by her voice: a girlishly bright organ, able to add gravity in timbre if necessary..." "While listening, time occasionally stands still."
Fono Forum, 01-3-2016

"With the same ease she does a whole song cycle. Impressive!"
Luister Magazine, 01-3-2016

"Bluntly failed, almost embarassing in their naivety are the spontaneous songs of the two,..."
Opernwelt, 01-3-2016

"They break through the song cycle not just with arty folk songs of Brahms and British and with their own, insanely beautiful improvisations on other texts of Eichendorff."
Klara's, 21-2-2016

CD-recommendation "Klassikwelt"
Radio Bremen, 13-2-2016

"Her white timbre contrasts somewhat with the deep melancholy of the composer."
Klassieke Zaken, 01-2-2016

Interview
Bachtrack, 19-1-2016

3*** ["]..Anna Lucia Richter however sings beautifully. She has a beautiful , lyrical soprano , reminiscent in the middle register with Felicity Lott . She sings with charm , expression and love and respect for the compositions. Possibly a CD with only " Extempore " would be even more interesting. The CD booklet contains a woolly, quasi- philosophical essay by the performers themselves."
Opera Nederland, 30-12-2015

CD-recommendation of the week
hr2-kultur, 27-12-2015

"Richters special, slender and yet deep voice captivates from beginning to end, her diction is phenomenal."
NRC Handelsblad, 14-12-2015

4**** "That Richter has much more to offer than a groomed voice, becomes clear when listening to her debut-cd. In a flash of inspiration she sings Schumann's 12-part cycle Liederkreis Op. 39 completely to pieces.” “Michael Gees is, besides being an outstanding accompanist, a gifted creator of atmosphere. His piano becomes a magic harp that radiates arounds Richter’s sound.”  
De Hand Van Guido, 05-12-2015

4**** "That Richter has much more to offer than a groomed voice, becomes clear when listening to her debut-cd. In a flash of inspiration she sings Schumann's 12-part cycle Liederkreis Op. 39 completely to pieces.” “Michael Gees is, besides being an outstanding accompanist, a gifted creator of atmosphere. His piano becomes a magic harp that radiates arounds Richter’s sound.”  
Volkskrant, 02-12-2015

With their free thinking, intelligent and protomusical performance these two artists lead the way back to the folk songs core.
BR Klassik, 01-12-2015

Interview!
WDR TonArt, 16-11-2015

Interview!
VAN Magazin, 01-11-2015

["]..This initiative and its realization deserves a warm recommendation."
Musicalifeiten, 01-11-2015

Play album Play album
01.
The Trees They Grow So High
03:45
(Benjamin Britten) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
02.
Wunschelrute (Extempore)
04:22
(Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
03.
In der Fremde
01:50
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
04.
Der alte Garten (Extempore)
08:01
(Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
05.
The Ash Grove
02:33
(Benjamin Britten) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
06.
Intermezzo
01:41
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
07.
Waldesgespräch
02:07
(Robert Schumann) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
08.
Die Stille
01:40
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
09.
In der Nacht (Extempore)
03:22
(Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
10.
Mondnacht
03:56
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
11.
Schöne Fremde
01:20
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
12.
How Sweet The Answer
01:50
(Benjamin Britten) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
13.
Auf einer Burg
03:40
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
14.
In stiller Nacht
02:50
(Johannes Brahms) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
15.
In der Fremde: Ich hör die Bächlein rauschen
01:25
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
16.
The last rose of summer
04:04
(Benjamin Britten) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
17.
Wehmut
03:05
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
18.
Da unten im Tale
01:44
(Johannes Brahms) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
19.
Zauberblick (Extempore)
02:16
(Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
20.
Zwielicht
03:05
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
21.
Ich weiß mir’n Maidlein
01:27
(Johannes Brahms) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
22.
Im Walde
01:32
(Robert Schumann) Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter
23.
Nachtwanderer (Extempore)
03:32
(Michael Gees, Anna Lucia Richter) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
24.
The Salley Gardens
02:51
(Benjamin Britten) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
25.
Frühlingsnacht
01:04
(Robert Schumann) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
26.
Wünschelrute (Extempore)
03:26
(Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
27.
I Wonder As I Wander
04:16
(Benjamin Britten) Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Gees
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Anna Lucia Richter & Michael Gees - Liederkreis

Often bought together with..

Dmitri Shostakovich, Mieczysław Weinberg
Solo Sonatas for Violin nos. 1 - 3
Linus Roth
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Christmas
VOCES8
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Between life and death - Songs and Arias
Christoph Prégardien / Michael Gees
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Works for 2 Harpsichords
Richard Egarr / Patrick Ayrton

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LICHT! 800 Years of German Lied
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