Brahms: Meine Liebe ist grün, Op. 63 No. 5 (Junge Lieder 1)

Dame Felicity Lott, revered British soprano, says of this CD:

“ Summertime also has many of my favourite songs in English, French and German. We made the CD at a friend`s house, and the sessions were so relaxed, with no London traffic to cause endless retakes! It`s a real mix of beautiful songs of all kinds, on a summer theme. I chose songs I loved, from Gershwin to Christopher Robin….

Three centuries of song are represented here, and, as BBC Music Magazine's Hilary Finch put it “such is the skill of Johnson's programming that the entire recital seems to be a single, sustained exhalation of rapture and reflection”

She went on to say:

The upper reaches of Lott's still gleaming soprano inhabit Barber's 'Shining Night' and Fauré's Clair de lune'. And her robust English version of Schubert's 'Who is Sylvia?' finds an irresistible companion in Arne's 'Where the Bee Sucks', with its veritable midsummer night's dream of an accompaniment from Johnson. The artists' palpable sense of joy and well-being gathers momentum as they visit Berlioz's 'L'île inconnue' and as they sing on the water with Schubert. . . . And Lott and Johnson know well that the only way to face sentiment is to acknowledge its own integrity, as they do when they listen to Haydn Wood's 'Little Brown Bird' and eavesdrop with Fraser-Simson on Christopher Robin saying his prayers.

This CD features songs from a great variety of composers - Gershwin, Barber, Cole Porter, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Arne, Schumann, Berlioz, and many more. A full 29 tracks of summer-themed songs!

At the 1987 Salzburg Festival recital the Slovenian mezzo Marjana Lipovšek concentrated on 19th-century works, straying only for her encores, with an impressive range of vocal colour and languages. Her pianist was Elisabeth Leonskaja, an accompanist entirely her equal. Their encores comprised Strauss's Die Nacht, another song by Brahms, an adaptation of a Slovenian folksong by the singer's father, Marijan Lipovšek, and, finally, Schubert's setting of Hölty's Seligkeit - a suitable description of the atmosphere that had developed between artists and audience over the course of the evening. It is an atmosphere that comes across in this live recording, the vitality of which is further underlined by Marjana Lipovšek's lively introductions to her encores.

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.

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.

Ellefson is one of the busiest trombonists working today and ‘Pura Vida’ showcases both his acrobatic flair and sensitive musicality. To our knowledge, this is the first recording of the piano version of the Pugh Concerto and the first recording of the Bourgeois Sonata. An orchestral veteran, Ellefson teaches at such prestigious universities as, Indiana Univ. and Northwestern and regularly plays with such orchestra as the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic. This CD has incredible virtuosic elements as well as simple, wonderful melodies!

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.

This remarkable collection highlights the career of the great Metropolitan Opera star, the American soprano Benita Valente, collecting performances from both concerts and the recording studio.

This retrospective program was made in consultation with Ms. Valente to create vocal art of the highest order!

Although Lisa Della Casa sang in many operas in Salzburg, she gave only a single lieder recital: in 1957 in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, accompanied by the Hungarian pianist Arpad Sándor, esteemed chamber music partner of musicians such as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz.Anyone who had not expected lieder to be a speciality of this lyric soprano would soon be disabused: with the incomparable clarity and simplicity of her melodic line and her precise and unaffected articulation, Lisa Della Casa excelled with touchstones of the repertoire by Schubert and Brahms. She also honoured her compatriot Othmar Schoeck (who had died the previous spring) with her performance of two lieder from his new setting of Goethe's singspiel libretto Erwin und Elmire. She also included in her programme three of the Chansons populaires by Ravel, 1957 being the 20th anniversary of his death. Naturally, she concluded her recital with a group of lieder by Richard Strauss, the composer with whose works her name is still most associated.A unique delight made available to the modern audience thanks to this Orfeo recording.