570297bk Strauss US 13/8/07 2:59 pm Page 5 offered four songs with orchestral accompaniment, with ‘o Glück!’( ‘O happiness!’) in music penetrated again Hilko Dumno four more songs in 1898 in Op. 36. Op. 37, in the same and again by shafts of light. Hilko Dumno studied the piano, chamber music and song form at the year, offered six songs, with texts by various writers, The present recording contains songs from the Musikhochschule in Detmold and Franfurt am Main. His teachers included Gregor STRAUSS dedicated to Strauss’s wife. Ich liebe dich (I love you) # earlier part of Strauss’s long career, but he continued to Weichert, Rainer Hoffmann, Tabea Zimmermann and Charles Spencer. He held takes a poem by the soldier-writer Detlev von write songs throughout his life, with the Four Last Songs scholarships from the German Music Council, Villa Musica Mainz and the Yehudi Liliencron, a heroic pledge of loyalty. composed in 1948, the year before his death. They make Menuhin Foundation. Hilko Dumno has appeared regularly with Christoph Songs of Love and Death Op. 39 brings five more songs and chronologically up an important and essential part of German Lieder Prégardien, Christine Schäfer, Hedwig Fassbender, Julia Kleiter and Johannes the last of those included here, Befreit (Set Free) ^, a tradition, a remarkable contribution by a musician of the Schende as their partner at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Schwarzenberg Allerseelen • Zueignung • Rote Rosen setting of a poem by Richard Dehmel, a friend of greatest versatility. Schubertiade, the Dresden Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival and the Amadeus Liliencron and a prolific writer. Strauss orchestrated the Festival in Geneva. Concert tours have taken him to North America and Japan. He Ruhe, meine Seele • Begegnung song in 1933. Tranquil and serene in spirit, the verse and has made recordings and appeared in various broadcasts for NDR (North German the setting are punctuated by the exclamation Keith Anderson Radio) and Hessischer Rundfunk, also for Radio de la Suisse Romande. Hilko Hedwig Fassbender, Mezzo-Soprano Dumno teaches song form at the Frankfurt am Main Hochschule for Music and Performing Arts. Hilko Dumno, Piano Hedwig Fassbender The mezzo-soprano Hedwig Fassbender studied the piano at the Cologne Musikhochschule and singing with Ernst Haefliger at the Munich Musikhochschule. As a student she was a prize-winner in the Würzburg Mozart Competition, the Vienna Hugo Wolf Competition, and the Federal, Young Concert Artist Competition, and was awarded the Munich Abendzeitung Music Prize. She began her singing career with a five-year engagement in Freiburg and Basel, a period during which she undertook the most important lyric mezzo-soprano rôles, including Cherubino, Hänsel, Octavian, Idamante, Dorabella, and Nicklausse. Since 1987 she has worked independently, appearing as a guest in many international productions, including Nicklausse in Barcelona, at the Paris Bastille, in Lyons and at the Vienna Volksoper, Idamante in Hamburg, Hermia in Berlin, Marguerite in La damnation de Faust in Amsterdam, followed by rôles including Carmen, Fricka, Mescalina, Baba the Turk, Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and Mère Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites. She sang her first Isolde at the Saarbrücken State Theatre in 2001, to public and press acclaim. Later rôles have included those of Marie in Wozzeck at La Scala, the Foreign Princess in Rusalka in Lyons and Paris, the Marschallin in Lyons, Kundry in Oslo and Mannheim, Kostelniãka in JenÛfa at the newly opened theatre in Erfurt, at the Berlin Komische Oper and in Monte Carlo, Ariane in Ariane et Barbe-bleue by Dukas in Ghent/Antwerp and Nice, with Isolde in Mannheim and Montpellier. She has appeared under conductors including Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Adam and Ivan Fischer, Kyrill Petrenko, Michail and Vladimir Jurowski, and Armin Jordan, and with directors including Herbert Wernicke, Robert Carsen and Willy Decker. For her interpretation of Sieglinde in the new Ring Cycle in Liège in 2003 she was named Singer of the Year. Hedwig Fassbender is also an acclaimed Lieder singer. Hilko Dumno has been her partner at the piano for some years. Her recordings include Isolde in Tristan und Isolde (Naxos 8.660152-54). 8.570297 5 6 8.570297 570297bk Strauss US 13/8/07 2:59 pm Page 2 Richard Strauss (1864–1949) Richard Strauss (1864–1949) with its strange twists of harmony, treats strophic form The same year brought settings of five poems by Songs of Love and Death Songs of Love and Death with some freedom, and the fifth, Geduld (Patience) 3, Felix Dahn, by now a professor at Breslau University rises to a climax of emotional intensity. Die and later better known as the author of a series of novels The German composer and conductor Richard Strauss the composition of songs, his earliest attempt, Verschwiegenen (The Confidantes) 8 is rhetorical in on early German history than as a poet. The third of the 1 4 Lieder, Op. 27, TrV 170 # 6 Lieder, Op. 37, TrV 187 was born in Munich, the son of a distinguished horn- Weihnachtslied (Christmas Carol) written at the age of conception, and Die Zeitlose (The Meadow Saffron) ! group, published as Schlichte Weisen, Op. 21, (Simple No. 3: Heimliche Aufforderung 3:39 No. 2: Ich liebe dich 2:15 player and his second wife, a member of a rich brewing six. This was the first of some 42 Jugendlieder, written is a short song of deceptive simplicity. The series ends Songs), Ach Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden! (Ah Love, I (John Henry Mackay, 1864–1933) (Detlev Liliencron, 1844–1909) family. He had a sound general education there, while during the years up to 1883. Three of these early songs with Allerseelen (All Souls) ¡, a song that rivals must leave you now) %, its opening words those of a studying music under teachers of obvious distinction. are included here. The first, Nebel (Mist) ), written in Zueignung in popularity. folk-song to which Dahn had added an imaginative 2 2 Lieder, Op. 26, TrV 166 $ 3 Lieder, Op. 29, TrV 172 Before he left school in 1882 he had already enjoyed 1878, when Strauss was fourteen, is a setting of a poem The following groups of songs published as Opp. continuation, has all the simplicity of the verse. No. 2: O wärst du mein 2:58 No. 3: Nachtgang 3:01 (Nikolaus Lenau, 1802–1850) some success as a composer, continued during his brief by Nikolaus von Lenau, to whom he was to return for his 15, 17 and 19, were largely settings of verses by Adolf Mädchenblumen, Op. 22, (Maiden Flowers), further (Otto Julius Bierbaum, 1865–1910) period at Munich University with the composition of tone-poem Don Juan. In a sombre E flat minor, it is Friedrich, Graf von Schack, formerly a member of the settings of Dahn, also belongs to 1888. Op. 26, including 3 8 Gedichte aus Letzte Blätter, Op. 10, TrV 141 % Schlichte Weisen, Op. 21, TrV 160 concertos for violin and for French horn and a sonata for dedicated, as were a number of these early songs, to his Prussian and then of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin civil only two songs, dated 1891, consists of settings of two No. 5: Geduld 5:08 No. 3: Ach Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden 1:44 cello and piano. By the age of 21 he had been appointed aunt Johanna Pschorr, a talented amateur singer, wife of service, who had settled in Munich in 1855. Two songs poems by Lenau. The second of these is the curiously (Hermann von Gilm, 1812–1864) (Felix Dahn, 1834–1912) assistant conductor to the well-known orchestra at Georg Pschorr, brother of Strauss’ mother and owner of here included are taken from Op. 15, the third of the set, chromatic O wärst du mein (O if you were mine) 2. The 4 Meiningen under Hans von Bülow, whom he succeeded a well-known Bavarian brewery. The brighter Lob des Leidens (Praise of Suffering) * and the fourth, set is dedicated to the tenor Heinrich Zeller, who was to 6 Lieder aus Lotosblätter, Op. 19, TrV 152 ^ 5 Lieder, Op. 39, TrV 189 in the following year. Begegnung (Meeting), written in 1880 and once in the Aus den Liedern der Trauer (From Songs of the sing the title rôle in Strauss’s unsuccessful opera No. 5: Hoffen und wieder verzagen, 3:12 No. 4: Befreit 5:24 (Adolf Friedrich von Schack, 1815–1894) In 1886 Strauss resigned from Meiningen and began possession of Johanna Pschorr, is a setting of verse by Mourner) &. Both are dedicated to the Munich Opera Guntram. (Richard Dehmel,1863–1920) the series of tone-poems that seemed to extend to the Otto Friedrich Gruppe 6, and the maturer Rote Rosen contralto Victoria Blank, the first with its sombre The four songs of Op. 27, dating from 1894, include 5 8 Gedichte aus Letzte Blätter, Op. 10, TrV 141 5 Lieder, Op. 15, TrV 148 utmost limit the extra-musical content of the form. (Red Roses) 7 dates from 1883 and was dedicated to a ending, and the second haunted by the shifting horn-call Ruhe, meine Seele (Quiet, my soul) ™, a dramatic No. 1: Zueignung 1:54 (Adolf Friedrich von Schack, 1815–1894) Meanwhile he was establishing his reputation as a girl Strauss had met on holiday, Lotti Speyer, with in the piano part. The songs date from 1886. setting of words by the left-wing writer Karl Friedrich (Hermann von Gilm, 1812–1864) & No. 4: Aus den Liedern der Trauer 1:59 conductor, directing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra whom he exchanged letters, finding in the verse of the The six songs of Op.