Dichterliebe Op. 48 / Lenau-Lieder und Requiem Op. 90 / Wesendonck Lieder by Christoph Prégardien / Michael Gees

Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner

Christoph Prégardien / Michael Gees

Dichterliebe Op. 48 / Lenau-Lieder und Requiem Op. 90 / Wesendonck Lieder

Price: € 20.95
Format: SACD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917278828
Catnr: CC 72788
Release date: 06 September 2019
Buy

Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

1 SACD ✓ in stock	€ 20.95	Buy
		Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917278828

Catalogue number
CC 72788

Release date
06 September 2019

"Conveyed with dignity but with little nostalgia by both Prégardien and Gees."

Fanfare, 21-2-2020

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

Robert Schumann was the most confessional of composers. And many of the songs from his great Liederjahr of 1840 were in essence love songs to Clara Wieck. In them he could express overtly what had been merely implicit in his piano music: his fears and longing, his passion and devotion, his pain at their separation, his vision of sexual and spiritual fulfilment, and his recurrent fears of losing her.

In Dichterliebe (‘Poet’s Love’) Op.48, he turns again to the pithy verses of Heinrich Heine’s Buch der Lieder.
On one level, Dichterliebe can be heard as his most piercing recreation of the fluctuating emotions he had experienced during his long courtship of Clara.

Characteristically of Schumann, it is the piano that controls the musical narrative in Dichterliebe.
Characteristic, too, of Schumann’s 1840 songs is the piano postlude that encapsulates and deepens a song’s meaning. Dichterliebe takes this to the furthest extreme.

Schumann’s late Lieder have too often been dismissed as the products of an increasingly tired, sick mind. True, they tend to be more elusive than the songs of 1840, with piano parts that are often self-effacing and/or tortuously chromatic. But there are more than enough fine songs among them to challenge the cliché that Schumann’s genius declined irredeemably after the early 1840s. If the songs of 1849-52 are sometimes less ‘melodious and direct’ than their predecessors, that does not automatically make them inferior.
In August 1850, Schumann set six poems by the unstable and ultimately insane Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), whom he had briefly met in Vienna in 1839. Like Schumann and Wolf, Lenau spent his last years in an asylum, his mind destroyed by syphilis. Schumann was ill and dejected at the time, and his mood is reflected in these poems of satiety, oppressiveness and transience.

As a tribute to the dying poet (who he initially believed had already died), Schumann appended to the Lenau group one of his rare religious songs: Requiem, a setting of Héloïse’s lament for Peter Abelard. For this quasi-operatic music of solemn grandeur and mounting exaltation, Schumann devised a swirling keyboard accompaniment that takes its cue from the poem’s image of angelic harps.

During the autumn of 1857 Wagner began a set of five songs to poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, written in evident imitation of Wagner’s hothouse Tristan manner – one of the very rare occasions when he set words other than his own. The Wesendonck Lieder, as they are now known, were revised and completed in 1858, and first performed as a cycle in July 1862 at a country house belonging to the publisher Franz Schott.

Each of the songs shares with Tristan the concept of ‘endless melody’, a saturated, dissolving chromaticism – the musical emblem of unstilled desire – and a feverish, oppressive atmosphere.

Het onvolprezen duo, tenor Christoph Prégardien en pianist Michael Gees, brengt een heerlijk album uit met prachtige liederen van Robert Schumann en Richard Wagner. Het zijn twee echte klassiekers: Schumanns Dichterliebe en Wagners Wesendonck Lieder. Daarnaast bevat de opname een minder bekend meesterwerk van Schumann, zijn late Lenau-Liederen met Requiem.

Liefdesliederen

Robert Schumann was een uiterst confessionele componist. Veel van zijn liederen die hij in 1840 zijn 'Liederjahr' componeerde, waren eigenlijk liefdesliederen voor Clara Wieck. Liederen waarin hij openlijk kon uitdrukken, wat in zijn pianomuziek alleen impliciet kon: zijn angsten en verlangens, zijn passie en toewijding, zijn lijden om hun gedwongen scheiding, zijn visie op seksuele en geestelijke vervulling en zijn terugkerende angst om haar te verliezen.

In Dichterliebe Op. 48 keert Schumann terug naar de kernachtige versies van Heinrich Heines Buch der Lieder. In zekere zin horen we in dit werk zijn indringende weergave van de wisselende gevoelens die hij had tijdens zijn lange hofmakerij aan Clara. Karakteristiek voor Schumann is dat de piano in Dichterliebe het muzikale verhaal controleert en het eindspel van de piano de betekenis van een lied verklaart en verdiept.

Schumanns late liederen

De late liederen van Schumann worden te vaak afgedaan als het product van een toenemend vermoeide, zieke geest. Toegegeven, met de vaak bescheiden, soms tergend chromatische pianodelen lijken ze ongrijpbaarder dan de liederen uit 1840. Maar er zitten meer dan genoeg mooie liederen tussen om het cliché te weerleggen dat Schumanns talent na de vroege jaren 1840 onherroepelijk afnam. Als de liederen uit 1849-1952 soms wat minder melodieus en direct zijn dan wil dat niet automatisch zeggen dat ze slechter zijn.

In augustus 1850 verklankte Schumann zes gedichten van de labiele en uiteindelijk krankzinnig geworden Oostenrijkse dichter Nikolaus Lenau, die hij kort ontmoet had in 1839 in Wenen. Net als Schumann bracht Lenau zijn laatste jaren door in een psychiatrische inrichting, zijn geest verwoest door de syfilis. In die tijd was Schumann ziek en neerslachtig. Zijn stemming werd weerspiegeld in Lenaus gedichten vol onvrede, beklemming en vergankelijkheid.

Als eerbetoon aan de stervende dichter, van wie hij aanvankelijk geloofde dat hij al gestorven was, voegde Schumann een van zijn schaarse religieuze liederen toe aan de Lenau serie: Requiem, een verklanking van Héloïses weeklacht voor Peter Abelard. Voor deze opera-achtige muziek vol plechtige grandeur en toenemende vervoering bedacht Schumann een wervelende pianobegeleiding, geïnspireerd door de engelachtige harpen die de dichter in zijn werk verbeeldde.

Wagners Wesendonck Lieder

In de herfst van 1857 zette Richard Wagner een serie van vijf gedichten van Mathilde Wesendonck op muziek, in duidelijke navolging van zijn broeierige Tristan. Het was een van de weinige keren dat hij andere woorden dan zijn eigen gebruikte. De Wesendonck Lieder, zoals we ze nu kennen, werden herzien en voltooid in 1858, en voor het eerst uitgevoerd als een cyclus, in juli 1862 in een landhuis van uitgever Franz Schott. Elk van de liedjes heeft met Tristan het concept van de eindeloze melodie gemeen, een verzadigde, smeltende chromatiek – het muzikale symbool van ongestild verlangen – en een koortsachtige, beklemmende atmosfeer.
Al met al een heleboel ingrediënten die dit album tot een genot maken om naar te luisteren.

Robert Schumann war ein äußerst bekennender Komponist, und viele der Lieder seines großen Liederjahres 1840 waren im Grunde Liebeslieder an Clara Wieck. Darin konnte er offen zum Ausdruck bringen, was in seiner Klaviermusik lediglich stillschweigend inbegriffen war: seine Ängste und Sehnsüchte, seine Leidenschaft und Hingabe, sein Schmerz angesichts ihrer Trennung, seine Vision von sexueller und geistiger Erfüllung, und seine wiederkehrende Sorge, sie zu verlieren. In Dichterliebe, Op.48, wendet er sich abermals den prägnanten Versen aus Heinrich Heines Buch der Lieder zu. Auf einer Ebene kann man Dichterliebe als durchdringendste Neuschöpfung der fluktuierenden Gefühle hören, die er im langen Werben um Clara erlebt hatte. Typisch für Schumann ist es das Klavier, das in Dichterliebe die musikalische Narrative kontrolliert. Charakteristisch für Schumanns Lieder aus 1840 ist auch das Klaviernachspiel, das die Bedeutung eines Liedes auf den Punkt bringt und vertieft. Dichterliebe führt dies ins Extrem.Schumanns späte Lieder werden zu oft als Produkte eines zunehmend müden, kranken Geistes abgetan. Es ist wahr, sie sind schwerer fassbar als die 1840er Lieder, haben Klavierpartien, die oft zurückhaltend und/oder quälend chromatisch. Doch es gibt unter ihnen genügend ausgezeichnete Werke, um das Klischee anzufechten, Schumanns Genie hätte nach den frühen 1840er Jahren unwiederbringlich nachgelassen. Wenn die Lieder aus den Jahren 1849-52 auch oft weniger „melodiös und direkt“ sind als ihre Vorgänger, so macht sie das doch nicht automatisch minderwertig. Im August 1850 vertonte Schumann sechs Gedichte des labilen und schlussendlich wahnsinnigen österreichischen Dichters Nikolaus Lenau (1802-50), den er 1839 in Wien flüchtig getroffen hatte. Wie Schumann und Wolf verbrachte auch Lenau seine letzten Jahre im Irrenhaus, sein Geist von Syphilis zerrüttet. Schumann war zu dieser Zeit krank und niedergeschlagen, und seine Stimmung spiegelt sich in diesen Gedichten von Sattsein, drückender Last und Vergänglichkeit. Als Hommage an den sterbenden Poeten (von dem er anfänglich angenommen hatte, er wäre bereit verstorben) fügte Schumann der Lenau-Gruppe eine seiner seltenen, religiösen Lieder an: Requiem, eine Vertonung von Héloïses Klage um Peter Abelard. Für diese opernähnliche Musik von feierlicher Größe und zunehmenden Hochgefühls ersann Schumann eine wirbelnde Klavierbegleitung, die von den Engelsharfen-Vorstellungen des Dichters inspiriert ist.
Im Herbst 1857 begann Wagner eine Reihe von fünf Liedern zu Gedichten von Mathilde Wesendonck, verfasst in deutlicher Nachbildung von Wagners treibhausartiger Tristan-Manier – und einer der wenigen Anlässe, zu denen er Texte vertonte, die nicht seine eigenen waren. Die Wesendonck-Lieder, als die man die Stücke heute kennt, wurden 1858 überarbeitet und abgeschlossen, und erlebten ihre Erstaufführung als Zyklus im Juli 1862 in einem Landhaus, das dem Verleger Franz Schott gehörte. Jedes der Lieder hat mit Tristan das Konzept der endlosen Melodie gemein, eine gesättigte, sich auflösende Chromatik – das musikalische Bild des ungestillten Verlangens – und eine fieberhafte, drückende Atmosphäre.

Artist(s)

Christoph Prégardien (vocals)

His lyric tenor voice had a youthful glow, yet he sang with plaintive beauty and piercing insight. - The New York Times Precise vocal control, clear diction, intelligent musicality, and an ability to get to the heart of everything he sings all ensure Christoph Prégardien’s place among the world’s foremost lyric tenors. Especially revered as a Lieder singer, he also regularly appears with renowned orchestras the world over. He has worked with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies, alongside conductors such as Barenboim, Metzmacher, and Thielemann. His wide orchestral repertoire includes the great baroque, classical, and Romantic oratorios and passions, as well as works from...

His lyric tenor voice had a youthful glow, yet he sang with plaintive beauty and piercing insight.
- The New York Times

Precise vocal control, clear diction, intelligent musicality, and an ability to get to the heart of everything he sings all ensure Christoph Prégardien’s place among the world’s foremost lyric tenors. Especially revered as a Lieder singer, he also regularly appears with renowned orchestras the world over. He has worked with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies, alongside conductors such as Barenboim, Metzmacher, and Thielemann. His wide orchestral repertoire includes the great baroque, classical, and Romantic oratorios and passions, as well as works from the 17th and 20th centuries. In opera, his roles have included, among others, Tamino, Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Fenton (Falstaff), Don Ottavio, Titus, Ulisse, and Idomeneo.

The current season begins with recitals at the Oxford International Song Festival, together with Yaara Taal in Munich, at Haus Marteau, in Monheim, and in Weiden as well as with Michael Gees in Marbach and Blaibach. In December, he returns to the Filharmonie Brno, where he most recently performed Handel’s Messiah, to sing songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn under Dennis Russell Davies. This is followed in January by two trio concerts in Switzerland with violinist Leila Schayegh, featuring works by Beethoven and Schubert; the programme will also be presented at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg in June. Further engagements include a recital at the Festival internacional de música de Bogotá and the closing concert and a masterclass at the Leeds Song Festival. He will also serve as a jury member at the Concours Reine Elisabeth and the Bachwettbewerb Leipzig. A major project of recent seasons has been Johannes Maria Staud’s Die schöne Müllerin/These Fevered Days, combining Schubert’s cycle in a newly orchestrated version with seven new songs after texts by Emily Dickinson. Following the 2024 world premiere with Ensemble Kontraste, highly successful performances followed last season with Klangforum Wien (Klangspuren Schwaz and Vienna Konzerthaus) as well as with the Remix Ensemble in Porto.

His extensive experience singing the Evangelist roles, together with his close working relationship with conductors such as Nagano, Chailly, Herreweghe, Harnoncourt, Luisi, and Gardiner, have provided the perfect base for his increasing dedication to conducting this repertoire as well. Following the success of his conducting debut in 2012 leading Le Concert Lorrain and the Nederlands Kammerkoor, he now regularly conducts renowned ensembles like the Balthasar Neumann Choir, Dresdner Kammerchor, Collegium Vocale Gent, and RIAS Kammerchor. In 2024, he took to the podium for Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Vespres d’Arnadí and the Cor de Cambra del Palau in Barcelona, returning to the latter in 2025 for a tour of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Belgian ensemble Il Gardellino.

The singer has recorded much of his repertoire on a discography of over 150 albums, which have received awards such as the Orphée d’Or of the Académie du Disque Lyrique, the Edison Award, the Cannes Classical Award, and the Diapason d’Or. For the label Challenge Classics, he has recorded Schubert’s Schwanengesang with Andreas Staier and Die schöne Müllerin with Michael Gees, which was selected as Editor’s Choice by Gramophone magazine and awarded the MIDEM Record of the Year award. Shortly thereafter followed recordings of Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch with Julia Kleiter, Between Life and Death, Wanderer, and the Grammy-nominated Winterreise disc – all with Michael Gees – as well as Father and Son with his son Julian Prégardien. His Schubert CD Poetisches Tagebuch with Julius Drake was awarded the German Critics’ Award 2016. His most recent releases include one recorded in collaboration with the Warsaw Chopin Institute with pianist Christoph Schnackertz featuring songs by Paderewski, Moniuszko and Duparc, and a new recording of Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Schumann’s Liederkreis, Op. 39 (with Julius Drake). In 2023, the Etcetera label released an album of Bach cantatas recorded with Stephan Schultz and Le Concert Lorrain, featuring Christoph Prégardien as baritone.

Teaching remains an important part of Christoph Prégardien’s musical life. Following many years at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Zurich and a professorship at the Academy of Music in Cologne, he continues to give masterclasses for young singers around the world.

less

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...

"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.

less

Composer(s)

Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner was an important innovator of music in his time. He is best known for his operas, which he himself preferred to refer to as musical dramas. He wrote the texts (the libretti) himself and sought to make a Gesamtkunstwerk, the ideal union of text, music and theatre. Over time, this lead to grandiose musical dramas which were performed in a specially built theater for these works in the small town of Bayreuth. Wagner's greatest critic, the philosopher Nietzsche, named his former friend the 'greatest miniaturist of music who in the smallest of space squeezed an endless amount of sense and sweetness'. Nietzsche regarded this as a sympton of decadence, yet it does portray the large variety of treasures which can...

Wagner's greatest critic, the philosopher Nietzsche, named his former friend the "greatest miniaturist of music who in the smallest of space squeezed an endless amount of sense and sweetness". Nietzsche regarded this as a sympton of decadence, yet it does portray the large variety of treasures which can be found in Wagner's music: the mysterious fantasy stories of the love potion of Tristan & Isolde, Wotan's spear, the sea of flames of Brünhilde, the sword of Siegfried... Still the real main character is the orchestra, which shines its light on all the true intentions and feelings of these heroes with great depth.

Both as a composer and as an individual, Wagner remains a subject of controversy and emotional discussions. By many he is hailed as a hero, and by equally many others completely dismissed. But his influence as a composer and musical innovator is undeniable!

less

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.

less

Press

Conveyed with dignity but with little nostalgia by both Prégardien and Gees.
Fanfare, 21-2-2020

Since the first time I heard him many years ago I have been enamored of Christoph Pregardien’s voice. It is sweet and supple. His readings are almost always spot-on. His partnership with Michael Gees has been fruitful over the years.
American Record Guide, 19-2-2020

Another fine release from this superb singer.
Gramophone, 30-1-2020

Truly impressive!
Music web International, 13-1-2020

In his interpretation of the famous lieder cycle [Dichterliebe], he still follows a very vitalistic approach where he joins a youthful excitment to a flawless knowledge of each text inflection... the voice has less flexibility than before but it has gained in breadth and scale, which are ideal features for Wagner's Wesendonklieder... [Lenau-Lieder] Pregardien wonderfully conveys the composer's fragility and intensity, thanks to a most refined technique - impressive is the quality of the pianissimi in every pitch - and an impeccable elocution. Michael Gees, careful partner with a beautiful tone, plays a meaningful role in this recording great lyrical flying.
Scherzo, 29-11-2019