Dichterliebe by Patrick Grahl & Daniel Heide

Patrick Grahl & Daniel Heide

Dichterliebe

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085530212
Catnr: AVI 8553021
Release date: 06 November 2020
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085530212

Catalogue number
AVI 8553021

Release date
06 November 2020

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Even more than in Beethoven’s case, Mendelssohn’s Lieder were intended for performance in the salons of the prosperous bourgeoisie: a convivial circle of highly qualified connoisseurs who shared the same outlook, and often a similar financial status.

Those members of the upper middle classes were the musical link and the sociological crossroads between Hausmusik and the concert hall. Mendelssohn often wrote songs as gifts for the friends he was visiting, frequently as settings of their own texts: the considerable technical challenges they contained still needed to be manageable for members of those circles.

Thanks to their songlike or folklike character, certain works by Mendelssohn (for instance from oratorios such as Elijah ) became true classics, even across broad swaths of the population. The narrower the compositional framework in his songs, the more noteworthy were Mendelssohn’s divergences: he often unobtrusively proved his mastery by varying upon a strict form (extending phrases or inserting small elements of surprise in strophic songs), thus providing variety, excitement, and ironic musical fractures.

Robert Schumann’s Lied output was probably more crucial for his existence than in Mendelssohn’s case, and likewise more significant due to the artistic dialogue he held with his wife Clara: songs thus took up a greater place in his life. Composed in Leipzig in 1840 (Schumann’s well-known “year of songs”), Dichterliebe Op. 48 on texts by Heinrich Heine offers an excellent example of Schumann’s use of a self-contained episode with a homogeneous poetic idea as a point of departure for an entire song cycle.

Thus he not only rearranged the order of Heine’s poems from the Lyric Intermezzo (published in 1827 as part of Das Buch der Lieder ), but chose the title Dichterliebe (“The Love of a Poet”) himself. Here the piano goes far beyond pure instrumental accompaniment: instead of merely illustrating the text, it provides its own dimension of interpretation as a partner on equal standing with the voice, both in terms of extension as well in terms of artistic niveau.

Artist(s)

Patrick Grahl (tenor)

Patrick Grahl was born in Leipzig and was initially a member of the St. Thomas Choir under Georg Christoph Biller; he then went on to complete his vocal training at the Academy of Music in Leipzig with Professor Berthold Schmid, graduating with distinction in the master-class examination. Patrick Grahl attended master-classes held by Peter Schreier, Gotthold Schwarz, Gerd Türk, Ileana Cotrubas and Prof. Karl-Peter Kammerlander, which gave him decisive momentum for his artistic development.
In 2016 the tenor won First Prize at the XX International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig.
He is already much in demand as an oratorio and concert singer, and has been invited to perform as soloist with orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the NDR Radio Philharmonic, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne as well as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the London Symphony Orchestra; he has worked with conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Hartmut Haenchen, Ludwig Güttler, Ton Koopman, Philippe Herreweghe, Andrew Manze, Omer Meir Wellber, Stefano Montanari, Hans-Christoph Rademann and Leopold Hager. He still has close ties with the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig and with the Dresdner Kreuzchor.
As an opera singer, Patrick Grahl makes guest appearances at outstanding venues including the Opéra National de Lyon and as Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Teatro La Fenice di Venezia.
Until 2013 Patrick Grahl was a scholarship holder of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn. In 2014, with the Ensemble Barockwerk Ost, he was the recipient of the Early Music Promotion Prize awarded by the SR (Saarländischer Rundfunk) and the Saarland Academy for Early Music.

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Daniel Heide

Born in Weimar, pianist Daniel Heide is one of the vocal accompanists and chamber musicians most in demand on the current international music scene, making appearances throughout Europe as well as in the Far East. Heide studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in his hometown with Prof. Ludwig Bätzel, and received valuable counsel from outstanding artists including Christa Ludwig and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
He collaborates on a regular basis with renowned vocalists including Andrè Schuen, Christoph Prégardien, Konstantin Krimmel, Julian Prégardien, Simone Kermes, Katharina Konradi, Patrick Grahl, Ingeborg Danz, Britta Schwarz, Johannes Weisser, Roman Trekel, and Natalie Perez.
Heide also collaborated as a duo partner with the late German-Greek mezzo-soprano Stella Doufexis: their CD Poemes with artsongs by Claude Debussy was awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize.
In chamber music he gives public performances with soloists including Tabea Zimmermann, Antje Weithaas, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Jens Peter Maintz, Friedemann Eichhorn, Andreas Willwohl, Barbara Buntrock, Julian Steckel, Isang Enders, Konstanze von Gutzeit, Benoit Fromanger, Danjulo Ishizaka, and the Mandelring Quartett.
Heide laid a further foundation for his career as vocal accompanist in 2011, when he launched Der lyrische Salon at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, a vocal recital series where he has accompanied a great number of outstanding singers on over 70 occasions.
Apart from his intense concert schedule, Heide’s activities are documented on a number of CD releases – most recently Dichterliebe with Patrick Grahl (CAvi, 2020), Liebende with Katharina Konradi (CAvi, 2021); Schubert‘s Die schöne Müllerin mit André Schuen released by DG (2021).
In 2016 André Schuen‘s first Lieder recital partnered with Daniel Heide received the ECHO, the album Wanderer 2019 the OPUS award (both CAvi-music). For the next years Daniel Heide is masterminding the 7 CD project with the complete songs by Franz Liszt subsequently folloed by a new work catalogue of Liszt‘s artsong output.
He also loves the genre of melodrama, working in spoken word programmes with actors and actresses of the likes of Christian Brückner, Thomas Thieme, Hanns Zischler, Markus Meyer, Sky Dumont, and Udo Samel.
For 13 years, Heide taught vocal accompaniment, chamber music, and instrumental accompaniment (Korrepetition) at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin and at the Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar. He is currently much in demand giving masterclasses and private coaching in the same areas, also with the intent of promoting and supporting young vocal artists and their piano partners.
With the onset of the Corona pandemic in March 2020, Daniel Heide devoted more of his time to studying solo piano repertoire, focussing on sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert.

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Composer(s)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Together with Mozart and Haydn, he was part of the First Viennese School. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn, and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost totally deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose; many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life.

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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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