Brahms: Von ewiger Liebe, Op. 43 No. 1 (Dunkel, wie dunkel)

Trombone virtuso Bremner in a programme that runs from death defying acrobatics to the smoothest sounds you'll ever hear and features four new solo trombone works. This CD features 8 pieces of music specifically chosen by David. Gareth Farr, Chris Gendell, Anthony Ritchie, and Paul Creston all feature here with compositions in the main commissioned for inclusion on this CD, alongside 3 fantastic transcriptions by Mark Lawrence of famous Lieder from Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms.

Two years before she died, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson gave this recital focusing on the theme of ‘love’ at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois. In this live recording, she displays her own very special sense of drama in a programme ranging over several centuries and covering every facet of this universal emotion, accompanied by an eminent partner, the pianist Peter Serkin.

For many years, Barbara Hendricks has been communicating her love of the lied in concerts and on disc. After Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Spanish songs and those of Poulenc, it is the turn of Brahms to find sublimation in this disc from the Swedish soprano, magnificently accompanied on the piano by her partner Roland Pöntinen and recorded between 2002-7.

Brahms composed more than 200 lieder throughout his career, though for the most part between 1851 and 1888. In the choice of texts he was generally guided by the climate or message of a poem, more than by its formal perfection; it was no doubt for this reason that he set very little Goethe to music, whose poems, he said, “are all so accomplished that music cannot be added to them”. His favourite theme was, naturally enough, love, in all its forms, whether evoking joy, optimism or nostalgia, loss, resignation, memory… One finds in these lieder authentic, personal experiences of Johannes Brahms. Caught between romanticism and classicism, he offered in his lieder music that is individual and consummate.

For this new recording on Capriccio mother and son unite. For more than fifteen years Renate Behle has been one of the world’s most outstanding interpreters of dramatic roles. With her “warm, sumptuous, full voice” whose “sound is etched in one’s memory” (Financial Times), she has thrilled audiences and critics alike on nearly every major opera stage in the world. Here she performs a recital of works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Beethoven and Brahms amongst others, with her son Daniel, a tenor in great demand on the major opera and concert stages of the world.

This highly regarded recording of a collection of lieder by Brahms was first released in 1982 and features one of the outstanding singers of her generation, the German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender. The pianist is Irwin Gage, and they are joined on two of the songs by the viola player Thomas Riebl.

Brigitte Fassbaender’s international career took off when she appeared as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1971. Since then she has appeared in all of the major opera houses around the world in roles such as as Clairon in Capriccio, the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, Fricka in Die Walküre, Carmen in Carmen, Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus, Amneris in Aïda, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Eboli in Don Carlos, and Klytemnestra in Elektra. Brigitte Fassbaender has also been successful as a lieder singer. In 1987, she won a Gramophone Award for her Deutsche Gramophon disc of songs by Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss.

Johannes Brahms was a prolific composer of Lieder and wrote around 200 during his lifetime. The first collection appeared in 1853, when Brahms had just turned 20, and the last was published in 1896, just a few months before his death.

This CD is the first in a new Cypres Archive series of recitals from La Monnaie. This theatre has played host to some of the most famous recitalists in the world and José van Dam has been chosen to launch the collection, as one of the greatest Belgian artists. There have been many fine evenings at La Monnaie and the label will release at least one CD per year in this series.

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Each disc of this Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented in chronological order but they do appear here in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through the repertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be presented in its entirety (in the case of this disc, Op 48). The folksongs of 1894 will be shared between all the singers in the series.

Hyperion is delighted to present the celebrated mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager in this first volume of the series. She enjoys an international career as one of today’s most important singers, dividing her time between recitals and opera in Europe, North America and the Far East.