Love Derwinger

Peterson-Berger is known to many Swedes as the turn of the century’s leading musical authority. Since it was not easy to have orchestral works performed toward the end of the nineteenth century, the genre of the violin sonata enjoyed extraordinary popularity around 1900 in Sweden.

Peterson-Berger uses Swedish folk elements throughout his works, particularly the Suite which is a genuine Swedish piece and more folkloristic than the Sonata.

Ever since her very first recital in the Salle Gaveau, Paris, nearly 40 years ago, Barbara Hendricks’ journey has been exceptional. Who would have thought that the little girl born in 1948 “with her feet in the mud of Arkansas” (to quote herself) would become one of the most emblematic singers of her generation and one of the most beloved by the general public? And yet that is what she did, traversing this half-century of history with an iron will and uncommon artistic purpose.

In this ‘Musical Portrait’ we begin with her childhood: the music she heard and sang in her father’s church. Barbara Hendricks has bestrode the world’s great stages for years, accompanied by some of the greatest chamber musicians, orchestras or conductors (Karajan, Giulini, Muti, Salonen, Barenboim). Sha has also lived through History with a capital H. As a girl she experienced the end of segregation in the southern United States, was one of the first black people to be admitted to the university, she obtained a degree in mathematics, before taking up singing as a professional. In 1987, as an ambassador of the High Commissioner for Refugees, she was one of the first artistes to put herself at the service of a humanitarian cause, taking advantage of her celebrity to spread the message of the suffering of refugees throughout the world.

This 2-CD compilation, released as a 'Musical Portrait', reflects the entirety of Barbara Hendricks’ recording history. All its musical facets are represented here with sincerity and excellence: opera, oratorio, song, negro spirituals and jazz, accompanied by some of the greatest, and with a few new releases as a surprise bonus.

“I have conceived a program that spans my entire recording history from my first solo recording of French Opera Arias with Philips to my latest recordings for my label Arte Verum. I am very pleased to be able to include also works from my recordings with Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, Telarc and Sony. A special treat is the Beethoven 9th Symphony in my very first performance with Herbert von Karajan.” Barbara Hendricks

Four years after 'Die schöne Müllerin', Schubert began, still to poems by Wilhelm Müller, his 'Winterreise', a 'Winter Journey‘ that started where the earlier work had ended. The same words, the same poet and the same themes: wandering, solitude, lost love.

And yet what a gulf between the two cycles: 'Die schöne Müllerin' was indeed inspired by the despair of a young miller getting to grips with the discovery of love, but despite this amorous chagrin, hope endures because innocence persists. 'Winterreise' seems on the contrary to touch the limits of life; the feeling of lost love ends up by dissolving and itself becoming lost, forgetful of invigorating memory. Schubert offers us an inner journey at the heart of a symbolic winter, relating the story of a rejected lover abandoning the places associated with his love for a journey without a destination, heading perhaps for his own death or for liberating delirium.

Often the preserve of male singers, this absolute summit of the Romantic Lied is rarely performed by women and only a few great feminine voices have tackled it. Barbara Hendricks, after waiting many years, put this major work in her concert repertory before recording it with her fellow traveller, Love Derwinger. And as Amélie Nothomb stresses in her dedicatory notice for this disc, "In listening to it, you do not care that this voice is that of a woman: it is pure emotion. Anyone who has known the sorrows of love – in other words everyone – will find in it the inner sound of heartache".

With his magnificent voice and magnetic stage personality, the Swedish baritone Peter Mattei has delighted audiences at the Metropolitan in New York, La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden in London, performing roles such as the Count in The Marriage of Figaro (“…Peter Mattei, making a belated Covent Garden debut as a crisply incisive Count Almaviva”) The Telegraph on The Marriage of Figaro) and the title roles in Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin and The Barber of Seville.

The present disc is an anthology of highlights from fifteen years’ of recordings, taking in classic Swedish and international Christmas carols as well as Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.