Shakespeare’s Tombs – Female Characters between Love, Power & Insanity
Love is a complex emotion that can bring delight, but also disturb and even destroy. This classical song recital, dedicated to modern and contemporary art song, explores how contemporary composers are still tackling age-old questions about the human soul through their music. RHONEFESTIVAL
Lieder aus um Tal – An Homage to Swiss Art Song
A declaration of love for the Valais Mountains and a tribute to Swiss song art: Eugen Meier’s cycle “Lieder us um Tal” set to Walliserdeutsch poems by Hannes Taugwalder is heard in the context of Swiss song compositions from two centuries. Including works by Othmar Schoeck, Joachim Raff, Isabel Mundry, Frank Martin, Hermann von Glenck, and others. RHONEFESTIVAL, JOACHIM RAFF GESELLSCHAFT 2022 DISCOGRAPHY
Komponistinnen / Women Composers / Compositrices
The duo’s second album on Solo Musica celebrates the song repertoire of women composers from Romanticism to Contemporary Music with 24 songs by 24 women composers. The Swiss soprano Franziska Heinzen and British-Polish-German pianist Benjamin Mead set out to research the work of women composers for Clara Schumann’s bicentenary in 2019 – and discovered a valuable treasure of relatively unknown music.
Beginning with a life journey through refreshing spring feelings, the album goes on to describe painful hours of loneliness and uncertainty as well as anxious premonitions of death and dark fears. Five examples of self-confident female characters, whose experiences are concluded with wiser, reflections on life, as seen retrospectively. DISCOGRAPHY, SCHUMANNFEST DÜSSELDORF, RHONEFESTIVAL (LIVE-RECORDING RADIO SRF 2 KULTUR), BONN, YOUNG ARTIST PLATFORM LIED FESTIVAL ZEIST
Les Six
Then as now, the music of „Les Six“ is a fascinating kaleidoscope of musical ideas and friendship; an idiosyncratic preciousness full of musical avant-garde, everyday melancholy, profound curiosities, virtuosity and passion that is in need of rediscovery.
The collaborative work „L’Album des Six“ was created in 1920, to which each of the six composers Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre contributed a piece. Arranged alphabetically, the album summarises the composers through their connection with various aesthetic ideas, different personalities and lifelong friendship. 100 years later, the „L’Album des Six“ is expanded with corresponding song cycles from their oeuvres: In addition to well-known compositions by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud, the first releases of the song cycles by Georges Auric (1940) and Louis Durey (1920) enrich the CD in a special way. DISCOGRAPHY, ZOFINGEN, ALPNACHSTADT, BRIG, ZÜRICH
Amuse Oreille – Ear feast
Love goes through the stomach! A semi-staged crossover song evening about love and other temptations, ranging from Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann to Mani Matter, Leonard Bernstein, and Charlie Chaplin, among others. Conceived as an elegant eight-course meal that definitely won’t hit your hips. Various performances, including Binner cultural evenings BINNER KULTURABEND
Dream Crowned – Homage to Rainer Maria Rilke
A world of its own, dream-crowned: Rainer Maria RILKE’S formulation of the concept of death, life and its transcendantality inspired a whole century of composers lasting into contemporary music to highly emotional, congenial musical works of art. The audience is abducted into a world full of poetry and love, as well as soul abysses with works by A. Mahler, Bernstein, Durey, Barber, Pejacevic, Hindemith and Reimann. RHONEFESTIVAL, ART & MUSIQUE SIERRE, BONN
Between Dreams & Reality
Spring evokes love and pure joy, while the moonlight emphasizes endless longing. Springing from one of the Duos first Lied programs, the title will be revived with new song constellations in 2020 and will host composers such as Claude Debussy, Alban Berg, Edvard Grieg. GEBRÜDER BUSCH SIEGEN
About kings and princesses
This recital leads you into a musical journey of another world, where kings drink from golden cups and ride unceasingly through the night (Franz Schubert), where exotic princesses seductively sing from a promised land (Maurice Ravel), where knights sit for many hundreds of years observing the unlucky luck (Robert Schumann). CONCERTS IN SWITZERLAND, SÜDTIROL, NETHERLANDS & GERMANY
Old tales, rediscovered – Homage to Gottfried Keller
Swiss and international composers as Othmar Schoeck or Hugo Wolf were both highly inspired by the Swiss Poet Gottfried Keller, who is celebrating his 200th anniversary in 2019. First set in music by Johannes Brahms, the poem cycle “Alte Weisen” (“Old tales”) about different women characters found its musical continuation in settings by Hugo Wolf, Felix Weingartner, Hans Sommer, and Hans Pfitzner. SWISS TOUR 2019: RHONEFESTIVALS, ZUNFTHAUS ZUR WAAG ZÜRICH, GOTTFRIED KELLER ZENTRUM GLATTFELDEN; FESTIVAL DER STILLE
Ancient Female Characters in Contemporary Song
This recital is dedicated to the modern and contemporary art of Lied. Even the composers of our time like getting involved with archetypes, searching for personal expression as well as (unusual) musical and vocal settings, revealing to us enlightening and refreshing answers to timeless questions. The program talks about mystical female worlds that have inspired male composers such as Wolfgang RIHM, and Alexander Muno. IM ZENTRUM LIED KÖLN
Debussy, Bernstein & Friends
Let us celebrate the centenary of two of the most opposing composers of our time. On the one hand, we have Debussy’y 100th death year reminding us of his pioneering break with musical tradition, encompassing exotic scales describing the inner (soul)landscape. And then we have Bernstein, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year: pianist, composer, conductor and pedagog. We celebrate the two geniuses alongside with their friends and colleagues Eric Satie, André Caplet and Igor Stravinsky as well Samuel Barber. SCHLOSS WALDEGG & NETHERLANDS TOUR
Schubert: Goethe and the Poets of Sensibility
The concert programme leads us from the serene lightness of spring across the secret glimpse of a loving and burning heart to the contemplation of beauty and (nocturnal) nature. The juxtaposition of two poetic currents, namely the poets of the sensibility and the oeuvre of J. W. Giethe in the music of the song master Franz Schubert let us immerse fully in their poetic worlds. SCHUBERTIADA BARCELONA
Love’s Magic on the Rhine
Seemingly eternal stories and scary fairy tales of mermaids have coexisted alongside the great river that is called the Rhine. The focus of the song recital is on one of the most prominent couples in musical history: Clara and Robert SCHUMANN – both outstanding composers inspiring each other in their own work. The audience is taken on a journey from love-bliss to love-loss and back again – you might even catch a glimpse of a mermaid jumping out of the water. SCHIFFFAHRT DÜSSELDORF FESTIVAL
Between East and West, Space and Time
This is a recital spanning from works by the Liedermeister Franz Schubert to exotic and contemporary sounds: The “elsewhere” as opposed to the “here” in lyric poetry and music serves as an antipode to the poetic shaping of spatial and emotional distances. Thus, in this recital, the easterly wind is the ambassador of love, space and time, whilst simultaneously symbolising the secret love between Wolfgang von Goethe and Marianne von Willemer. BRIG, DÜSSELDORF