THE CAPTIVE NIGHTINGALE Nineteenth century art song was firmly harnessed That much of the music on this disc was long to the instrument found in every genteel forgotten is symptomatic of the neglect of this GERMAN ROMANTIC RARITIES home – the piano. Other available players were repertoire. A ‘Lieder recital’ gradually established FOR SOPRANO, CLARINET & PIANO eagerly welcomed to the salon and editions were itself in the concert hall rather than the published with ad libitum or obbligato parts household, predominantly with voice and piano for violin, flute, horn, cello, harmonium, and the alone, and the twentieth century turned a instrument outstandingly raised in status by largely deaf ear to the perceived sentimentality 1 Alpenlied | Song of the Alps Andreas Späth (1792-1876) [3.31] Mozart and Weber, and well suited in range and or Biedermeier qualities of ‘salon music’. 2 Das Mühlrad | The Mill-Wheel Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849) [5.06] tone colour – the clarinet. The winning combination Discovering items long overlooked can bring 3 Schweitzers Heimweh | Homesick for Switzerland Heinrich Proch (1809-1878) [5.00] of voice, clarinet and piano delighted intimate many rewards. One item in this recital, the 4 Die gefangene Nachtigall | The Captive Nightingale * Heinrich Proch [5.02] gatherings and inspired many lovely works. iconic song for this combination, Schubert’s 5 Heimathlied | Home Song Johann Baptist Wenzel Kalliwoda (1801-1866) [4.03] Shepherd on the Rock, has always been admired 6 Seit ich ihn gesehen | Ever Since I Saw Him Franz Lachner (1803-1890) [4.54] Musical history owes much to clarinettists and performed, and exerted its influence in whose talents stimulated a series of subject matter and style on others heard here. 7 Er, der Herrlichste von allen | He, the Noblest of All * Franz Lachner [4.44] compositions: Anton Stadler with Mozart, 8 Romanze Romance | Helen’s Air Franz Schubert (1797-1828) [3.24] Heinrich Bärmann with Weber, Richard Mühlfeld Most of our featured composers held court 9 Der Hirt auf dem Felsen | The Shepherd on the Rock Franz Schubert [12.16] with Brahms, and Johann Simon Hermstedt appointments. Schubert again is the notable 0 Meine Heimat | My Homeland Johan Sobeck (1831-1914) [4.51] in the case of both Spohr and Andreas Späth. exception as he had little affinity with that q Der Sennin Heimweh | The Homesick Milkmaid Johann Baptist Wenzel Kalliwoda [4.53] London-born Henry Lazarus (1815-95), probably world. The early nineteenth century Kapellmeister the finest English clarinettist of his day and was both court composer and orchestral w Der Hirt und das Meerweib | The Shepherd and the Mermaid * Peter von Lindpaintner (1791-1856) [7.02] an influential teacher, did much to popularise conductor – the latter still a novel role. * Premiere Recording music with obbligato clarinet including the Kalliwoda, Kreutzer, Lachner, Lindpaintner, Total timings: [64.50] song by Kreutzer chosen here. Clarinets, Proch and Späth all had busy careers as like pianos, underwent significant technical conductors both of concerts and in the opera improvements during the Romantic era. house, and all of them composed operas too. Domestic circumstances would often prompt ELENA XANTHOUDAKIS SOPRANO the substitution of one ‘obbligato’ instrument These songs frequently breathe and exhale JASON XANTHOUDAKIS CLARINET for another of similar range: the clarinet taking pure mountain air. Countless contemporary CLEMENS LESKE PIANo a violin part for example. verses were penned in praise of the Alps: love or www.signumrecords.com - 3 - longing for an Alpine homeland, its mountains, Andreas Späth (1792-1876) was born at Mühlrad (perhaps an apposite subject as native Prague. He spent most of his career streams, woods and valleys, and its denizens Rossach near Coburg and received his musical Kreutzers’s father was a Swabian miller!) has conducting Prince von Fürstenberg’s orchestra – shepherds, milkmaids, the flocks and herds, training at the Hofkapelle of the Duke of been attributed to Uhland, but is adapted at Donaueschingen, married the opera singer the tinkling of their bells. This simple, sunny Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, excelling in composition, from a poem by Eichendorff usually known as Teresa Brunetti (1803-92), and their son celebration of nature is occasionally clouded keyboard and clarinet. He took an appointment Das zerbrochene Ringlein. The images of an Wilhelm served as Kapellmeister at Karlsruhe. by doubt (the little hesitation in the as organist in Switzerland in 1822 and from endlessly turning millwheel (broken chord Kalliwoda’s output was large (Der Sennin penultimate line of the first Kalliwoda song), 1833 was music director in Neuchâtel, returning piano figures), a lover’s ring forever broken, the Heimweh of 1862 is his opus 236), including 2 the urge to wander (‘to wander is the Romantic to Coburg as Kapellmeister and court organist poet’s wish to escape life and so silence both operas, orchestral, chamber and piano works; condition’, as Alfred Brendel writes), lovelorn in 1838. He composed 5 operas and wrote a the wheel and his grief forever are starkly but his songs were widely admired. Both Heimathlied loneliness, or the pain of homesickness. These significant corpus of clarinet music. This song simply conveyed with subtle touches that would (Song of Home) and the following song emotions abound in the texts set here. Another of 1839, Op. 167 No.7, was published as an not disgrace the composer of Die schöne Müllerin. are characteristically tender reflections on the commonplace of these Romantic lyrics is appendix to his Sechs Schweizer Lieder. theme of ‘no place like home’. Whenever the absence: yearning for a lost home or a distant Heinrich Proch (1809-1878) was a well-known music strays into the minor mode, that mood beloved, or for both. German composers Conradin (Konradin) Kreutzer (1780-1849) was Viennese conductor and singing teacher; pupils is soon dispelled with a return to the major delighted too in mingling the natural and Kapellmeister first at Stuttgart and Donaueschingen included Materna, Dustmann and Tietjens, and and affirmation of where the heart truly lies, supernatural worlds both in opera and the (where he was succeeded by Kalliwoda), his daughter Louise was a professional singer. comfortingly consoled by the clarinet’s gentle Lied: spirits of mountain, of forest, and of the subsequently director from time to time of the He composed an opera, operettas and over yodelling. (The homesick girl of the second watery deeps, haunt the Romantic landscape. Kärntnerthor and Josefstadt theatres in Vienna, 200 songs. Both examples here again express song is a Sennin: contraction of a word for an and in Paris, Cologne and Mainz. Of his circa 40 longing for home. Schweitzers Heimweh (Op.38, Alpine dairymaid, Sennerin.) Swiss melodies of hill and valley, Kuhreihen operas Das Nachtlager in Granada (1834) had 1847) gives patriotic voice to a Swiss exile or Ranz des vaches, ideally suited to improved lasting renown; the others embrace the gamut in an uncongenial land. In Die gefangene Schubert’s friend Franz Lachner (1803-1890) clarinet technique and timbre, became a of Romantic themes such as the Tyrolean Nachtigall (Op.11, 1842) the misery of a hailed from a talented Bavarian family of favourite in opera houses and the home. From Die Alpenhütte (1815) and the water-spirit caged nightingale pining for forest freedom is musicians, completed his studies in Vienna, the arpeggios that herald both Der Sennin Melusine (1833). On listening to the effective characterised by the piteously faltering repeated then began his career as deputy Kapellmeister Heimweh and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen to the clarinet part here, it will come as no surprise notes that begin the clarinet’s introduction. at the city’s Kärntnerthor Theater, soon rising joyous piping-in of the spring in the last section that Kreutzer was a noted clarinettist; he to principal Kapellmeister (alongside Conradin of the Schubert song we hear gentle echoes composed much for his instrument. In Stuttgart Johann Baptist Wenzel Kalliwoda [Jan Křtitel Kreutzer). After two years in Mannheim he and sparklingly transfigured forms of yodelling. he formed a lasting friendship with Ludwig Václav Kalivoda] (1801-66) studied violin became Hofkapellmeister at the Munich court Uhland whose verses he often set. Das and composition at the Conservatory of his (1836) until the advent of Wagner there in the - 4 - - 5 - mid-1860s. (Ironically Lachner’s conducting Germany, concerns the wives of knights forever Johann Sobeck (1831-1914), born in Karlsbad, reflected the agendas addressed on a larger paved the way for Wagner by improving absent at war: they conspire to withhold their Bohemia, was a clarinettist, trained at Prague scale in opera, so there are famous examples orchestral standards and introducing Tannhäuser favours till the men agree to give up fighting Conservatory, who enjoyed a career of fifty of the Schauer-Lied: Goethe’s Erlkönig (most and Lohengrin.) Greatly respected in his day and stay at home. The Romance with clarinet years from 1851 as principal clarinet for the famously set by the young Schubert) and Heine’s for his operas, choral works, 8 symphonies and obbligato for the young wife Helen is one of Court Orchestra at Hanover. He composed much Die Loreley (as vividly set by Liszt). As with other orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber the high points of the score. for his own instrument in a variety of forms Schubert’s boy and Liszt’s fisherman, the music music, many songs, organ and piano music, – sonatas, concertos, wind quintets, opera leaves no doubt that Lindpaintner’s shepherd the products of this huge industry lay largely Der Hirt auf dem Felsen was composed in fantasias and songs. As with the pieces by is drawn to his doom by enchantment. In neglected for a century after his death. Lately October 1828, the month before Schubert’s clarinettists Kreutzer and Späth, the writing this large-scale virtuoso setting the enticements there has been a notable revival of interest in death.