Vienna: Fin de Siècle
Show recording detailsALPHA393
1920s
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About
After the huge success of her first album for Alpha, Crazy Girl Crazy (Alpha 293), which received a Grammy Award, a JUNO Classical Award in Canada, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, FFFF in Télérama and DIAMANT in Opéra Magazine and was BBC Music Magazine CD of the Month, Barbara Hannigan is back with her long-time collaborator, the Dutch pianist and great interpreter of twentieth-century music Reinbert de Leeuw, for a recital exploring the roots of modern music, with the composers who left their mark on the turn of the twentieth century: Hugo Wolf (Mignon Lieder), Arnold Schoenberg (Vier Lieder Op.2), Anton Webern (Fünf Lieder nach Gedichten von R. Dehmel), Alexander Zemlinsky (selected lieder), Alma Mahler (Die stille Nacht etc.) and Alban Berg (Sieben frühe Lieder). From what has been called the Second Viennese School, an incredible mix of musicians, painters, writers and other artists frequenting salons and cafés, a completely new musical language was born. Barbara Hannigan is especially fond of this repertory and has long championed it. Of course, we think of Berg and his unforgettable Lulu: ‘The artist who sings’, as journalists often like to describe her, embodies this music with her legendary dramatic sense, making each of these lieder a story in itself, even a mini-opera .
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Reviews
“… Hannigan and her pianist, Reinbert de Leeuw, collaborate seamlessly to create a magical sound-world. Her voice has a surprising richness, almost voluptuous, in Schoenberg and Berg, but she adopts a far more blanched tone for Webern… What could become drowsy or blowsy is given a clean and elegant reading, a real case of intelligent performance proving that less really can be more.” *****
Classical Album of the Week
“… Hannigan’s voice wraps itself lovingly around these vocal lines, savouring every chromatic morsel … she conveys the fragility of this music with such perfect tact, and De Leeuw measures the accompaniments so precisely, leaving their unresolved dissonances hanging in space, that a whole expressive world seems perfectly evoked.” ****
“Hannigan’s recital focuses on a repertoire that reflects the decaying of certainties as the First World War loomed… Hannigan and de Leeuw command this mysterious, disturbingly shaded and sensual music with aptly teasing restraint.”
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