Wolf, H: Italienisches Liederbuch (46 songs, complete) (Italian Songbook)

RPS award winning soprano Joan Rogers is joined for Wolf's Italian songbook by acclaimed baritone Roderick Williams, with Roger Vignoles at the piano.

This new recording for Champs Hill Records was made shortly after their recital at Wigmore Hall, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, in April 2012. "Each of the three brought sensitivity and experience to the poetry at their comman, the end result being a performance of much beauty, feeling and most welcomely for this repertoire - joy" Opera Britannia

Self-ciritical of being master of 'only a small-scale genre' Hugo Wolf made carefully structured collections of his songs, each a tiny drama in music. It means that his Songbooks are much more than a random collection and, as with The Italian Songbook, they represent his attempt to make something more substantial, to tell a bigger story, to create a kin of 'compressed' opera.

Wolf, who died in 1903 following a period of insanity brought on by syphilis, described The Italian Songbook - his las major work - as "the most original and perfect of my compositions"

Wolf sets his Italian texts, in German translation, with extraordinary wit and perception - in 'Mein Liebster hat zu Tische mich geladen' (my sweetheart invited me to dinner), the piano accompaniment reflects the very poor meal, right down to the accents representing the chopping of very stale bread. 'Mein liebster singt' (My sweetheart is singing outside the house) incorporates the lover's serenade in the piano part - a music sounds like a Chopin mazurka.

Dame Janet Baker (b.1933) needs no introduction. During her illustrious career, which spanned from the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and concert performer, widely admired throughout the world for her dramatic intensity and musical intelligence, notably in the works of Gustav Mahler. John Shirley-Quirk (b.1931) made his operatic debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1961, and was prominent in performing and recording the vocal works of Benjamin Britten (as was Janet Baker). He appeared regularly with all the major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world. Steuart Bedford (b.1939) was also associated with the music of Britten, and conducted the world premiere of Death in Venice in 1973. Between 1974 and 1998, he was one of the Artistic Directors of the Aldeburgh Festival.

These 46 songs show Wolf at his most captivatingly individual. Many of them are brief fragments of fantasy, which call for the most intense artistry if their meaning is to be fully communicated. Dame Janet Baker expresses the wide range of emotions inspired by love with searching perception.

John Shirley-Quirk has a true understanding of the lyrical impulse that fills the wonderful love songs given to the male interpreter.

Steuart Bedford has devised his own sequence for the songs and is an equal partner in portraying the conflicting emotions contained in Wolf's work.

This BBC recording is in excellent stereo capturing the atmosphere from the Aldeburgh Festival in Snape Maltings in June 1977.

The recording has never been issued before.

This is Janet Baker’s only recording of the Italienisches Liederbuch in its entirety.

Baritone Christian Gerhaher has already set new standards with his interpretations of the most famous romantic song cycles. On his new album he turns his attention to Hugo Wolf's "Italian Songbook" together with the young German soprano Mojca Erdmann. They are accompanied on the piano by Gerhaher’s long-term musical partner Gerold Huber.

Catherine Robbin is one of Canada’s best-known mezzo-sopranos and has established an international reputation. She has performed with John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood. Daniel Lichti has been acclaimed as one of Canada’s finest concert and oratorio singers. He is also no stranger to the operatic stage.

The German soprano Christiane Oelze has received many awards, including one at the Hugo Wolf Competition in 1987. She performs a wide repertoire, ranging from baroque to contemporary works.

This is the third CD in this very successful series. It is a unique collaboration between the famous Oxford Lieder Festival and Stone Records. All the works are performed by internationally renowned Lieder singers and are accompanied by Oxford Lieder’s artistic director Sholto Kynoch.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the late nineteenth century lieder composer Hugo Wolf, and to mark this event the celebrated lyric tenor Christophe Pregardien, renowned for his work in this area of the repertoire, is joined by soprano Julia Kleiter in a recording of one of Wolf’s key compositions, the “Italienisches Liederbuch” (Italian Songbook).

Born 1956 in Limburg, Germany, Christoph Prégardien is widely regarded as among the foremost lyric tenors of our time. Over the last few years he has produced three critically acclaimed lieder recordings for Challenge Classics, the first two of which have featured Schubert’s great song cycles “Die Schöne Müllerin” (CC72292), and “Schwanengesang” (CC72302). Most recently, in 2009 he released a beautifully compiled collection of songs entitled “Between Life and Death” (CC72324). Julia Kleiter first came to prominence in 2004 when she made her debut as ‘Pamina‘ in a production “Die Zauberflöte“ at Opéra Bastille in Paris. Since then she has performed under Marc Minkowski in Paris and Madrid, and Claudio Abbado at the Edinburgh Festival.

The two parts of Hugo Wolf’s Italian Songbook were written in 1891 and 1896 during a period in which the composer’s physical and psychological health was rapidly deteriorating. It was to be his last important composition, Today Wolf is considered to be one of the most important 19th Century lieder composers, but that recognition was slow in coming. As late as 1931, admirers felt compelled to begin a Hugo Wolf Society to make his lieder better known via gramophone recordings.