Coming Soon, Matthias Goerne records Bach, Schumann and Wagner

As glowing reviews for his Wotan in Die Walküre (the latest instalment of the Naxos Ring Cycle under Jaap van Zweden, and our Disc of the Week earlier in the month) continue to roll in, we hear on the grapevine that Matthias Goerne will join Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for a disc of Wagner scenes and arias, to be released on Harmonia Mundi in late 2017 – exact repertoire is still to be confirmed, but the same forces performed King Mark’s monologue from Tristan und Isolde, Amfortas’s lament from Parsifal and Wolfram’s Hymn to the Evening Star from Tannhauser in Sweden earlier this year and Goerne has also tackled The Dutchman’s ‘Die Frist ist um’ in concert recently (under the baton of his recent lieder collaborator Christoph Eschenbach).

But as well as venturing further into the dramatic repertoire, next year will also see Goerne coming full circle and revisiting two of the composers who played key roles in his early recording career. The spring will see him embark on a series of Schumann lieder discs with pianist Markus Hinterhäuser – two decades after Goerne burst onto the recording scene with a Dichterliebe (with Vladimir Ashkenazy, on Decca) which prompted Gramophone to describe him as ‘with little doubt the most probing male Lieder singer to emerge from Germany in recent years, and an artist of extraordinary magnetism’. The first instalment will be the first time Goerne’s been partnered by Hinterhäuser on disc, but the pair recently attracted attention with their New York performances of William Kentridge’s multi-media reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise; Classical Source described their interpretation as ‘as fine an account of Winterreise as any I have heard’, whilst The New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini observed that ‘Mr. Hinterhäuser’s poetic playing matched Mr. Goerne’s expressivity… these artists were so deliberate and authoritative that I was swept along.’ Between Schumann and Wagner, Goerne will also partake in Harmonia Mundi’s commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, joining the Freiburger Barockorchester for a disc of Bach cantatas; a 1999 Decca recording of Ich habe genug and other works (under the baton of Roger Norrington) was another of Goerne’s breakthrough recordings, and remains available as a download here.

You can view Matthias Goerne's complete available discography here.

Recent and related recordings from Matthias Goerne

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