Live From Salzburg Wagner: Wessendonck-Lieder Mahler: Rückert-Lieder (CD)

In two live Salzburg Festival concerts, given a year apart yet both marked by the unique circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, Elīna Garanča sings orchestral songs with Christian Thielemann and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Their interpretations of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (“velvety, immensely rich in fine shadings” - Opera-online.com) and Mahler’s Rückert Lieder (“simply to die for” - Bachtrack.com) are moving tributes to the power of live performance following months of silence.

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Elīna Garanča regards lieder as “the most intimate form of musical expression”, and at these two concerts in Salzburg she celebrated the interiority of these orchestral songs as a return to the essence of music. With her burnished lower register and effortlessly floated high notes, she explored these various portraits, impressing her listeners with her flawless articulation of the words and her highly concentrated emotionality, offering neither too much nor too little. As a genre, the orchestral song invests the power of the individual voice with the colour and density of orchestral sonorities and transforms these songs into concentrated arias, with Thielemann on the podium maintaining a magisterial balance between the soloist and the orchestra.

TRACK LIST

RICHARD WAGNER (1813–1883)
WESENDONCK-LIEDER WWV 91
Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme · Five Poems for Female Voice
Text: Mathilde Wesendonck
Orchestration: Felix Mottl (1–4), Richard Wagner (5)

Der Engel »In der Kindheit frühen Tagen«
Stehe still! »Sausendes, brausendes Rad der Zeit«
Im Treibhaus »Hochgewölbte Blätterkronen«
Schmerzen »Sonne, weinest jeden Abend«
Träume »Sag, welch wunderbare Träume«

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)
5 LIEDER NACH GEDICHTEN VON FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT
5 Songs on Poems by Friedrich Rückert
Orchestration: Gustav Mahler (6, 8–10), Max Puttmann (7)

Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft
Liebst du um Schönheit
Um Mitternacht
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen