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Track(s) taken from CDA67934

Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, S289 Third version

composer
1844/9; LW N29
author of text
Lyrisches Intermezzo No 51

Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano), Julius Drake (piano)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
Recording details: October 2011
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Simon Kiln
Engineered by Arne Akselberg
Release date: July 2012
Total duration: 1 minutes 16 seconds

Cover artwork: Photograph of Angelika Kirchschlager. Sim Canetty-Clarke
 

Reviews

‘Finding a wide palette of colours within her naturally warm mezzo, Kirchschlager is in her element … this recital should open many ears to the richness and variety of Liszt's songs. Recording and presentation are first-class’ (Gramophone)

‘The more one hears of Liszt's songs, the more one wonders why they have been so rarely performed … Kirchschlager's rich, resonant mezzo finds beauties everywhere on this disc, from heights of drama to intimacies of reflection, and at every turn Drake is with her’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘This is a fascinating and rewarding recital, which explores Liszt’s oeuvre from the 1840s to 1870s … the grainy and distinctive timbre of Kirchschlager’s vivid mezzo-soprano is well suited to this highly charged emotional world, and Drake’s playing is eloquently impassioned without sinking to fortissimo ham’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘Hyperion's retrospective of Liszt's complete songs [is] one of the most important recording projects of recent years … Kirchschlager is exquisite and intensely dramatic by turns … Drake is outstanding throughout’ (The Guardian)

‘The high expectations roused by Volume 1 of Hyperion's compete Liszt songs … are more than met with this second instalment … the programme is excellently chosen to showcase Liszt's versatility as a master of Romantic song … Kirchschlager's extraordinary dramatic gifts are displayed in the two longest songs here, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher and Die drei Zigeuner … rich new levels of meaning are revealed … Kirchschlager and Drake deliver performances that set the beauty and inventiveness of each song in high relief … not to be missed’ (International Record Review)
Vergiftet sind meine Lieder is one of Liszt’s greatest songs. Liszt was perhaps the first composer to discover the fifty-first poem in Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo for song; other nineteenth-century musicians steered clear of the Vesuvian compound of accusation, vulnerability, helplessness, lamentation, even fear, in these words. In one reading, Heine’s poem tells of his lifelong dilemma as a post-Romantic poet caught between the Ideal and the Real: the ‘Geliebte’ could be both the Romantic muse, or the Ideal, who has poisoned his art of real life, and the Real who poisons the Ideal. Liszt may have seen in this poem a reflection of his disintegrating relationship with Marie d’Agoult, which ended the same year of 1844 in which he first composed this song. His music is organized by repetitions of the initial theme both with and without words, a mini-rondo of obsessive grief. When he designates ‘du’, ‘you’, as the beloved, housed in his heart along with Medusa-like serpents, we hear one of the most shattering dissonances in all nineteenth-century music.

from notes by Susan Youens © 2012

Vergiftet sind meine Lieder compte parmi les plus grandes mélodies de Liszt, qui fut certainement le premier à faire un lied du cinquante et unième poème du Lyrisches Intermezzo de Heine—les autres musiciens du XIXe siècle se tinrent éloignés d’un tel amalgame volcanique d’accusation, de vulnérabilité, d’impuissance et de lamentation, voire de crainte. Ce poème peut être perçu comme une évocation du dilemme auquel Heine, poète postromantique pris entre l’Idéal et le Réel, fut confronté toute sa vie: la «Geliebte» pourrait être ensemble la muse romantique, ou l’Idéal qui a empoisonné son art de la vie réelle, et le Réel qui empoisonne l’Idéal. Liszt a pu voir en ce poème un reflet de sa relation déliquescente avec Marie d’Agoult, rompue en 1844, l’année même de ce lied. Sa musique est agencée en répétitions du thème initial, avec ou sans paroles—un mini-rondo de chagrin obsessionnel. Lorsqu’il fait de «du», «tu», l’aimée, portée en son cœur avec des serpents à la Méduse, on entend l’une des dissonances les plus violentes de toute la musique du XIXe siècle.

extrait des notes rédigées par Susan Youens © 2012
Français: Hypérion

Vergiftet sind meine Lieder ist eine der großartigsten Vertonungen von Liszt. Er war wohl der erste Komponist, der das 51. Gedicht aus Heines Lyrischem Intermezzo für Gesang entdeckt hat; andere Musiker im 19. Jahrhundert mieden das vulkanische Gemisch aus Anklage, Verletzlichkeit, Hilflosigkeit, Wehklagen, ja Furcht in diesen Worten. Heines Gedicht erzählt von seinem lebenslangen Dilemma als postromantischer Dichter, der zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit gefangen war: die „Geliebte“ könnte sowohl die romantische Muse (das Ideal) sein, die seine Kunst des wirklichen Lebens vergiftet hat, als auch die Wirklichkeit, die das Ideal vergiftet. Liszt könnte in diesem Gedicht eine Spiegelung seiner sich auflösenden Beziehung zu Marie d’Agoult gesehen haben—sie endete 1844, im gleichen Jahr, in dem er dieses Lied erstmals komponierte. Seine Komposition ist aus Wiederholungen des Anfangsthemas mit und ohne Text aufgebaut, ein Mini-Rondo von obsessivem Schmerz. Beim „du“ mit dem er die Geliebte bezeichnet, die in seinem Herzen neben medusenhaften Schlangen haust, hört man eine der erschütterndsten Dissonanzen in der Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts.

aus dem Begleittext von Susan Youens © 2012
Deutsch: Christiane Frobenius

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