NI 5808

Franz Schreker, Und Seine Schüler
Dietrich Henschel, baritone
Luzerner Sinfonieorchester
John Axelrod, conductor

Franz Schreker was twenty-two years old and a recent graduate of the Vienna Conservatory when he composed his Intermezzo and Scherzo in 1900; Julius Bürger was the same age when, still a student, he wrote two orchestral settings of poems by Christian Morgenstern and Gottfried Keller in 1919; and Ernst Krenek, having only recently completed his studies, was just a few months shy of his twentysecond birthday when his first symphony received its premiere in 1922. The works on this CD by three Viennese composers, born respectively in 1878, 1897, and 1900, are starting points at which influences and classroom lessons begin to coalesce into creative individuality ...

NI 5812

Mozart, Janácek, Pirchner
quintett.wien

The pieces in this programme represent highly contrasting examples of what might be termed the Central European tradition of wind music ...

NI 5809

The Songs of Nicolae Bretan
Ruxandra Donose, mezzo-soprano
Julius Drake, piano

Bretan’s operas, and above all his monumental folk epic Horia, can perhaps be seen as his main body of work; and yet it is song that runs like a connecting thread through his entire creative life. Whereas the operas were largely written during the time of his activity at the two theatres in Cluj, the composition of songs occupied him from his youth until the late years of his life. Bretan, who discovered his passion for singing very early and began to cultivate his voice, felt just as early the urge to express himself in songs of his own, to give musical form to his feelings.Although he availed himself of poems in various different languages for that purpose, his own language seems to have been music, and his true home the realm of tones.

NI 5810

The Songs of Nicolae Bretan
Alexandru Agache, baritone
Martin Berkofsky, piano

Where is the original source of Bretan's singing and composing to be found? Was he a singer who also composed or was he a composer who also sang? The first would be a relative rarity in the history of music, since very few singers, even among the greatest, beside their activity as interpreters, demonstrated to such an extent as Bretan a need to be creators as well. Obviously music - and that is to say vocal music - was for him the most elemental expression of life.And as such it had to seek in both directions for its realization: in singing and in creating songs. His is not just a case of the lucky combination of two talents; here are two manifestations of a single and vehement will to express oneself. The human being and the singing human being must have been identical for Bretan. To him life and singing were one and the same thing.