Schumann - Songs of Love and Loss - Chandos: CHAN10492 - CD or download

By placing the poignant invocation of 'Mein schöner Stern', emblem-like, at the top of this artfully programmed Schumann recital, Sarah Connolly reveals much of the composer's fervent inwardness... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2008, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 29th Sep 2008
Catalogue No: CHAN10492
Label: Chandos
Length: 65 minutes

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Excerpt, Schumann: Minnespiel, Op. 101

Work length2:43

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Eugene Asti (piano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

Minnespiel, Op. 101: No. 4. Mein schoner Stern!

Track length2:43

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Schumann: Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Op. 135

Work length9:40

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Eugene Asti (piano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

I. Abschied von Frankreich (Farewell to France)

Track length1:52

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II. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes (After the birth of her son)

Track length1:35

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III. An die Konigin Elisabeth (To the Queen Elizabeth)

Track length1:32

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IV. Abschied von der Welt (Farewell to this World)

Track length2:59

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V. Gebet (Prayer)

Track length1:42

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Excerpt, Schumann: Gedichte (6) und Requiem, Op. 90

Work length4:08

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Eugene Asti (piano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

Requiem, Op. 90, No. 7

Track length4:08

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Schumann: Liederkreis, Op. 39

Work length25:21

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Eugene Asti (piano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

No. 1. In der Fremde (In Foreign Parts)

Track length2:06

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No. 2. Intermezzo

Track length1:44

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No. 3. Waldesgesprach (Colloquy in the Forest)

Track length2:18

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No. 4. Die Stille (Quietness)

Track length1:33

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No. 5. Mondnacht (Moonlit Night)

Track length3:58

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No. 6. Schone Fremde (Fair Foreign Land)

Track length1:19

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No. 7. Auf einer Burg (On a Fortress)

Track length2:40

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No. 8. In der Fremde (In Foreign Parts)

Track length1:22

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No. 9. Wehmut (Melancholy)

Track length2:41

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No. 10. Zwielicht (Twilight)

Track length2:52

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No. 11. Im Walde (In the Forest)

Track length1:16

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No. 12. Fruhlingsnacht (Spring Night)

Track length1:32

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Schumann: Frauenliebe und -leben, Op. 42

Work length23:53

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Eugene Asti (piano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

No. 1. Seit ich ihn gesehen (Since I first saw him)

Track length2:30

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No. 2. Er, der Herrlichste von allen (He, the noblest of all)

Track length3:57

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No. 3. Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben (I can't understand it, I don't believe it)

Track length1:35

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No. 4. Du Ring an meinem Finger (You, ring on my finger)

Track length2:56

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No. 5. Helft mir, ihr Schwestern (Help me, o sisters)

Track length2:08

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No. 6. Susser Freund, du blickest mich verwundert an (Sweet friend, you gaze)

Track length4:56

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No. 7. An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust (At my heart, at my breast)

Track length1:35

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No. 8. Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan (Now you have hurt me for the first time)

Track length4:16

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About

The British mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, twice nominated for a Grammy, here performs a collection of songs by Robert Schumann, which combines two song cycles from the extremely prolific song year 1840 with several songs from the composer’s last years. She is accompanied by Eugene Asti.

Sarah Connolly fell in love with Schumann’s songs in her youth. She has sung them since her early days as a performer and in the booklet she and Eugene Asti write, ‘at the heart of Schumann’s music on this recording lie a profound melancholy and a personal and completely honest, open-hearted empathy for the poetry, which is totally disarming. All the stories and situations depicted in these songs were so much a part of the composer’s own life experience that we just cannot help but be touched and moved by them. Perhaps it is for these reasons that our love for Schumann is especially great, and we feel privileged to be able to share this extraordinary music with you’.

It is often claimed that Schumann’s late songs, which include the first seven on this CD, show a composer in decline – a charge that is refuted by such wonderful Lieder as the Wilhelm Meister settings and ‘Nachtlied’ (Goethe), ‘Der Einsiedler’ (Eichendorff), ‘Aufträge’ (L’Egru), ‘Mein schöner Stern!’ (Rückert), ‘Requiem’ (Dreves), the Lenau settings of Op. 90 and the Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, all of which are as fine as anything Schumann wrote in 1840, his great ‘song’ year.

The album’s key work is the rarely recorded Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, songs on five poems attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots. They were his last Lieder and the most austere that Schumann ever wrote. He composed the set in 1852 during a period of deep depression and offered the work as a Christmas present to his wife, Clara. It is also matched here by ‘Requiem’, setting a translation by Leberecht Blücher Dreves of an old sacred Latin text. This requiem, from Op. 90, was one of four that Schumann composed in the last years of his creative life, and it seems likely that the proliferation of such settings around 1850 had symbolic import – ‘requiems, after all, are written for oneself’, as Schumann once confided to a friend.

Reviews

November 2008

By placing the poignant invocation of 'Mein schöner Stern', emblem-like, at the top of this artfully programmed Schumann recital, Sarah Connolly reveals much of the composer's fervent inwardness - something she and her accompanist, Eugene Asti, capture so well throughout.

November 2008

Sarah Connolly's beautifully sung Frauenliebe und-leben often called to mind Janet Baker's early recording with Martin Isepp… Connolly, like Baker, gives the cycle a more melancholy, introspective cast than most. Connolly is magnificently desolate and accusatory in the final song of bereavement, with a graphic sense of withdrawal from the world before the healing keyboard postlude.

14th November 2008

the intimate restraint of Connolly's singing frequently suggests the sad analysis of emotion from a retrospective or nostalgic viewpoint...[Liederkreis] is superbly done - an unnerving voyage through a soured Romantic landscape, awash with intimations of the horrors that lurk unsuspected in the corners of the psyche.

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