Unanswered Love: Music for Soprano by Reimann, Henze & Rihm | Wergo WER73602

Unanswered Love: Music for Soprano by Reimann, Henze & Rihm

£13.25

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Label: Wergo

Cat No: WER73602

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 3rd March 2017

Contents

About

There is no doubt that the present CD has an especially personal meaning for Juliane Banse, because it celebrates her many years of association with all three composers, Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann and Hans Werner Henze.

Juliane Banse met these composers at the beginning of her career and still enjoys a close friendship with them. A close collaboration has led over the years to the premiere of many of their works.

It is not surprising that Reimann’s Drei Gedichte der Sappho ('Three Poems by Sappho') and Rihm’s Aria/Ariadne (a 'Scenaria' for soprano and small orchestra) are dedicated to her and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. Although Juliane Banse did not have regular contact with the composers during the period when these works were written, she says she had complete confidence that the pieces would be composed with her in mind and appropriate for her voice. The finished works justified this confidence.

The third piece on this CD was written before Juliane Banse was born, but she does have a connection to Hans-Werner Henze: in the opera L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe ('The Hoopoe and the Triumph of Filial Love'), from 2003, Henze wrote a role especially for her voice, and she was intensely involved in the compositional process.

Reviews

Ravishing though her performance of the Henze settings is, it’s a work in which Banse has to share the spotlight with the orchestra. But her voice is undoubtedly the centre of attention in the other two pieces, which were composed expressly for her. Aribert Reimann’s three expressionist settings of Sappho are very much a vehicle for her flexible, lustrous tone and fabulous articulacy, while Wolfgang Rihm’s Aria/Ariadne is a more ambitious work altogether. ... The musical language hovers on the boundaries of tonality, while typically making darting allusions to a whole range of earlier musics, but it makes a stunning showcase for Banse’s very special vocal and dramatic gifts.  Andrew Clements
The Guardian 1 March 2017

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