Swan Songs - Schubert, Brahms, Barber & Bernstein - Avi Music: AVI8553402 - CD or download

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Release Date: 12th Oct 2018
Catalogue No: AVI8553402
Label: Avi Music
Length: 74 minutes

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Excerpt, Schubert: Schwanengesang, D957

Work length19:11

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Christoph Berner (soloist), Christian Immler (soloist)

1. Der Atlas

Track length2:16

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2. Ihr Bild

Track length2:37

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3. Das Fischermädchen

Track length2:26

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4. Die Stadt

Track length3:23

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5. Am Meer

Track length3:51

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6. Der Doppelgänger

Track length4:38

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Schubert: Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121: 1. Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh

Work length4:18

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Christoph Berner (soloist), Christian Immler (soloist)

Excerpt, Brahms: Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121

Work length12:37

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Christoph Berner (soloist), Christian Immler (soloist)

2. Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle

Track length3:50

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3. O Tod, O Tod, wie bitter bist du

Track length3:44

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4. Wenn ich mit Menschen- und Engelszungen redete

Track length5:03

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Barber: Three Songs, Op. 45

Work length7:57

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Danny Driver (soloist), Christian Immler (soloist)

1. Now Have I fed and easten up the rose

Track length2:11

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2. A Green Lowland of Pianos

Track length2:16

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3. O Boundless, Boundless Evening

Track length3:30

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Bernstein: Arias and Barcarolles for Mezzo, Baritone and Piano four-hands

Work length30:11

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Danny Driver (soloist), Silvia Fraser (soloist), Anna Stéphany (soloist), Christian Immler (soloist)

I. Prelude

Track length1:28

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II. Love Duet (For Jave)

Track length4:11

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III. Little Smary (for S.A.B.)

Track length2:30

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IV. The Love of My Life (to SWZ. for KO)

Track length4:12

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V. Greetings (for J.G.)

Track length2:50

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VI. Oif Mayn Kash'neh (At My Wedding) (for M.T.T.)

Track length4:44

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VII. Mr. and Mrs. Webb Say Goodnight (for Mino and Lezbo)

Track length7:35

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VIII. Nachspiel (P0stlude) (In Memoriam)

Track length2:41

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SWAN SONGS (Schwanengesänge)

“What remains? And to what extent are composers, when they compose, aware of how urgent that question is? In my opinion, these are the main themes that confront us in a “swan song” (a composer’s last work – or, as in the case of our recording, the last opus in his vocal output). In the second part of Schwanengesang – in the songs based on poems by Heine --- Schubert attains an unprecedented economy – or rather concentration – of means: the demands thereby made on the performer are literally “unheard of”. The text and the music express themselves so directly that the listener can find no refuge in musical solace.

Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge, written in 1896, one year prior to his death, paint an entirely different picture. I find that they reveal his inner struggle for personal truthfulness, his hope to attain an all-subliming love after so many years of painstaking sacrifice, while somehow managing to retain a certain kind of faith. To his friends he admitted that he thought he had composed “entirely godless songs” in Op. 121, although their texts “thank God, can be found in the Bible”.

His audience wanted to hear “religious songs”. That is what they seem to be on the surface, and the agnostic composer’s admirers have been ever since supposing that Brahms had waxed religious.

Samuel Barber’s last vocal work, the Three Songs Op. 45, has fascinated me ever since my student years, because of the songs’ multi-facetted style, their refined text and the music’s melancholy, morbid beauty. The second song, A Green Lowland of Pianos – the “funny one”, as Barber put it – elegantly whisks us off into an entirely different universe, a surreal décor in which it seems entirely natural that black pianos to listen every evening to frogs!

As ambiguous as life itself, and undoubtedly as scintillating and multi-facetted as Leonard Bernstein’s own personality: that is how his swan song, Arias and Barcarolles, presents itself. This musical potpourri of daily-life situations acted out by singers (usually based on the composer’s own poems) makes an explosive Broadway entrance in the first song.”

Swan Songs - Schubert, Brahms, Barber & Bernstein

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