Father & Son (reissue) by Christoph & Julian Prégardien

Various composers

Christoph & Julian Prégardien

Father & Son (reissue)

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917285826
Catnr: CC 72858
Release date: 04 September 2020
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Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917285826

Catalogue number
CC 72858

Release date
04 September 2020

"Admittedly, the declination of some Schubert hits in duets or unison shows in an interesting way the similarity of the two timbres, which makes the very principle of aternance quite curiously fascinating since we begin to guess who is who. What is certain is that this vocal doubling makes each song a nice exercise more than a narration that would take us by the collar. Mitigation. Commonality."

Diapason, 01-5-2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

The conditions under which Schubert’s art of the song developed into a kaleidoscopically incandescent spectrum that crossed over genres and the institutionally set, historical boundaries disappear today as a rule under the pedestal that the late nineteenth century began to erect for the composer. The traces of improvisational practice were increasingly lost within a music culture that stylised the printed manuscript into a quasi sacred object. A particularly successful way of leading back to a fundamental impetus in Schubert’s art of the song is through an approach towards the songs that takes the moment of spontaneous performance seriously as a communicative act, without denying the work character of Schubert’s music. The idea of ‘one’ universal human voice seems to materialise with particular intensity in the commingling of two voices of similar timbre, which can permanently interchange and double their identity. Based on our knowledge for instance of the Schubertiade reminiscences of 1868, remembered and noted down by Moritz von Schwind, can we not imagine that the ‘Schubert singers’ Johann Michael Vogl and Karl von Schönstein might indeed have sung alternately (or even in unison)?

Christoph Prégardien:
When a second part suddenly crops up in a Schubert song, many people say of course: are we allowed to do this to Schubert? Even I had to be persuaded at first to consider the improvisational element, however, our approach to adopting it didn’t happen arbitrarily, but in the context of our awareness of music-making in past centuries.

Michael Gees:
You can formulate reasons that aren’t based on historical knowledge but ensue from the music itself. "Nacht und Träume” (Night and Dreams), for example – you listen to this music, you hear that it bears a potential within: the potential of starting out from the rather simple structure and being able to ramify practically into endlessness. This opens up spaces in which you can go on fantasising without bounds. In this context our versions are not actually “contrived”, but formed by “eavesdropping” on the music itself to a certain degree. If I hear it, I hear something like another “I”, another self, a corresponding multi-voice being.

Julian Prégardien:
In our arrangements we first and foremost wanted an encounter with the prodigious complexity of Schubert’s oeuvre in lied and to show that boundaries overlap! Schubert composed the song “Widerspruch” (Contradiction) in two versions in any case – namely the solo version and as an ensemble lied – and we are now in a way adding a third. With “Licht und Liebe” (Light and Love) we have also included an original composition for two voices, as well as dramatic ballads, convivial vocal ensembles and elegiacally meditative solo songs which we have “heard” anew and arranged in various ways.

Vader en zoon Prégardien, adembenemend mooi in hun duetten
Christoph en Julian Prégardien zingen in deze uitvoering van Duitse liederen, de sterren van de hemel. Als altijd voortreffelijk begeleid door pianist Michael Gees. Hij en Prégardien junior bewerkten de liederen van componisten als Schubert en Bhrams voor 2 tenoren en piano. Van Erlkönig, de ballade van Schubert bijvoorbeeld, maakten ze een dialoog tussen vader en zoon. Het is net echt zoals Christoph en Julian het gesprek voeren, zo emotioneel zingen ze het lied. Toch: "Christoph en Julian waken ervoor dat sentiment uitmondt in sentimentaliteit. Maar ze verbergen niet dat ze genieten, senior met zijn gelouterde stem, junior met zijn veelbelovende glans." De Volkskrant december 2014.

De Duitse Christoph Prégardien (1956) begon zijn zangcarrière als koorknaap in de dom van Limburg an der Lahn, zijn geboortestad. Prégardien behoort tot de beste lyrische tenoren van deze tijd. Hij heeft een heldere en precieze stemvoering. Zijn intelligente interpretatie en dictie, gecombineerd met zijn kracht om door te dringen tot de kern van zijn rol, maken van hem een alom gewaardeerd zanger. De tenor treedt wereldwijd op met vooraanstaande orkesten en is ook een graag geziene gast in ons land. Zijn zoon Julian (Frankfurt, 1984) studeerde zang aan de hogeschool voor muziek in Freiburg. Zijn eerste optreden in een opera was in 2007 in München. Julian verschijnt regelmatig op festivals in Europa en is een veelgevraagd concertzanger.

Michael Gees is bekend als begeleider van liederen en werkt intensief samen met Christoph Prégardien. Gees is vooral improvisator. Vaak start hij met een enkel akkoord, om van daaruit de melodie te creëren. Zoals NRC Handelsblad over dit album schreef: "Niet toevallig is de begeleider en arrangeur hier pianist Michael Gees; een van de schaarse ‘vrije’ klassieke musici die het IJzeren Repertoire buigzaam opvatten. Gees gaat met gecomponeerde muziek zo vrij om als de componisten ooit zelf, toen scheppen en uitvoeren nog één waren.”

Ausgehend von Schuberts wohlbekannten Liedern entstand hier ein faszinierendes Projekt. In einer Zeit, in der das geschriebene Wort bzw. der geschriebene Ton praktisch heilig ist, bringen Vater und Sohn das improvisatorische Element zurück in die Musik. Darf man das? Ja, denn hier wird nichts erfunden, sondern nur betont, was der Musik bereits eigen ist, und im Kontext der historischen Musizierpraxis neue Räume öffnet.

„Allem voran hatten wir eine Begegnung mit der Komplexität von Schuberts Liedschaffen im Sinn. Wir wollen zeigen, dass sich Grenzen überschneiden," sagt Julian Prégardien. Und das tun sie hier - ob die Lieder nun von Anfang an als Duett konzipiert wurden, oder das Neuarrangement das Hervortreten eines der Musik innewohnenden „anderen Ichs, einem mehrstimmigen Wesen" erlaubt. Das Ergebnis sind sehr zarte, bedachte, improvisatorische und kommunikative Bearbeitungen für zwei Stimmen von ähnlichem Timbre, in denen sich der Gedanke der einen, universalen menschlichen Stimme mit besonderer Intensität zu manifestieren scheint.

Artist(s)

Christoph Prégardien

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.

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Michael Gees

'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.

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Julian Prégardien

Julian Prégardien is one of the most distinguished tenors of his generation and, at the same time, occupies a unique position among classical singers. As a performer, curator and cultural educator and mediator he combines artistic excellence with a keen interest in historical, social and interdisciplinary contexts. Alongside his international concert and opera career, he develops programmes that bring works and different eras into new dialogues. Through masterclasses, teaching and discussion formats he is committed to passing on musical practice and opening up classical music to new perspectives and broader audiences.

Alongside his international concert and opera career, he develops programmes that bring works and different eras into new dialogues. Through masterclasses, teaching and discussion formats he is committed to passing on musical practice and opening up classical music to new perspectives and broader audiences.

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Fabienne Waga

Patricia Messner

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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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.

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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 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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Friedrich Silcher

Hermann Zilcher

Cesar Bresgen

Press

Admittedly, the declination of some Schubert hits in duets or unison shows in an interesting way the similarity of the two timbres, which makes the very principle of aternance quite curiously fascinating since we begin to guess who is who. What is certain is that this vocal doubling makes each song a nice exercise more than a narration that would take us by the collar. Mitigation. Commonality.
Diapason, 01-5-2021