芭芭拉.韓翠克絲 馬勒歌曲集 Hendricks / Mahler: Lieder (Arte Verum)

After the success of her album Blues Everywhere I Go released in 2015, Barbara Hendricks returns to the great classical repertoire by playing songs of one of the major composers of the genre: Gustav Mahler.

An essential part of Gustav Mahler's work belongs to the field of the lied, which represents with the symphony, one of the two sides of its production. The importance of these two genres is all the greater in his work that the composer has been able to renew the spirit by making the merger.

The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wandering Companion) belong to his first creative period: they represent a wandering companion who, struck by fate, goes out into the world, thus progressing at random. This cycle of 4 very different melodies presents obvious analogies to Schubert's Winter Journey, which tells the story of a dreamy young man pursued in his wanderings by the memory of his beloved; it is the very image of the romantic Wanderer who is looming here with his sickness, his mood swings, his hopes and his annoyances.

Fifteen years later, Mahler turns to the poet Friedrich Ruckert to compose his Ruckert-Lieder, which represents a moment of balance during one of the happiest eras of his life, that of his meeting with Alma. The brevity, the delicacy and the refinement of these lieder oppose the more grandiloquent pages of Mahler; these are superb miniatures reflecting inner states of mind in which the spirit of the popular lieder and that of the lied savant mingle. If it is not a true cycle, a unity of tone and atmosphere unites these masterpieces of the lied.

Having reached a certain perfection in the genre of the lied, Mahler could now move towards the fusion of the lied and the symphony, which he was going to realize in Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a vast "symphony of lieder "built on Chinese poems. Der Abschied (The Farewell), the last of the cycle, is the longest of the work but also the most elaborate and the music, of a great stripping, is of an eternal beauty, just like the last words of this Master Mahler's page that closes this record.

Barbara Hendricks has a long musical history with Gustav Mahler: she recorded her Second Symphony in 1987 with Christa Ludwig and Leonard Bernstein, and twice her Fourth Symphony: in 1979 with Zubin Mehta and in 1992 with Esa-Pekka Salonen. But this is the first time she recorded these lieder, yet companions of her concert repertoire for more than 40 years.

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
LIEDER

LIEDER EINES FAHRENDEN GESELLEN
Transcription : Arnold Schonberg

1 I. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht
2 II. Ging heut' morgen uber's Feld
3 III. Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer
4 IV. Die zwei blauen Augen

RUCKERT-LIEDER
5 I. Ich atmet' einen linden Duft!
6 II. Liebst du um Schonheit
7 III. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
8 IV. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
9 V. Um Mitternacht
10Der Abschied (extrait de Das Lied von der Erde)
Transcription : Arnold Schonberg