Walter Braunfels - Orchestral Songs Vol. 2 (Hansjörg Albrecht)

Information

Composer: Walter Braunfels

• (01) Drei chinesische Gesänge, Op. 19
• (04) Romantische Gesänge, Op. 58
• (09) Die Gott minnende Seele, Op. 53
• (13) Der Tod des Kleopatra, Op. 59
• (14) Vier Japanische Gesänge, Op. 62

Genia Kühmeier, soprano

Camilla Nylund, soprano

Ricarda Merbeth,  soprano

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Hansjörg Albrecht, conductor

Date: 2016

Label: Oehms

https://www.oehmsclassics.de/artikel/16654/Hansj%c3%b6rg_Albrecht_Walter_Braunfels__Orchesterlieder_Teil_2

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Review

The second instalment of Hansjörg Albrecht’s Braunfels survey improves markedly on its predecessor (8/16). First, it consists entirely of original works for voice and orchestra, without the operatic offcuts or purely orchestral music that padded Volume 1. Second, it has marginally the better orchestra: this is not to dismiss the Weimar Staatskapelle’s fine contribution to the first disc, but given Albrecht’s sensuous way with Braunfels’s textures, the slightly sharper focus of the Berlin Konzerthausorchester’s playing is a distinct bonus.

We get a stronger impression of Braunfels as a song composer, too, and in particular a powerful sense of his use of the orchestral song as a personal response to political crisis. With the exception of the Drei chinesische Gesänge of 1914, their eroticism soured by uneasy prophecies of impending conflict, all the works recorded here were written or completed during the Third Reich, when proscriptions against his music meant no guarantee of public performance. Die Gott minnende Seele, from 1935, is a harmonically complex affirmation of the Catholicism to which Braunfels converted in 1918. Begun during the First World War, Romantische Gesänge was only completed during the Second. The dark, uncompromising Vier japanische Gesänge of 1945 were a response to the death of Braunfels’s younger son on the Eastern front. Even the cantata Der Tod der Kleopatra (1944), which inevitably invites comparison with Berlioz, is a war work with its depiction of suicide in the aftermath of defeat.

The material is shared between three very different sopranos. Ricarda Merbeth is more at home with the declamation of the Japanische Gesänge than as Cleopatra, whose high-lying phrases expose pressure in her upper registers. Genia Kühmeier sounds very assured, though, in Die Gott minnende Seele, where the intervals are tricky and the vocal line disquietingly exposed. Best of all, however, is Camilla Nylund, sumptuous yet keenly responsive to the texts throughout, and displaying superb dynamic control in the Chinesische Gesänge. The latter, placed first on a disc that runs chronologically, is a deeply haunting work that should, by rights, be heard with greater frequency.

-- Tim Ashley, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Oct/Braunfels_songs_v2_OC1847.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/10/braunfels-orchestral-songs-vol-2-cd-review

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Walter Braunfels (19 December 1882 – 19 March 1954) was a German composer, pianist, and music educator. Composing music in the German classical-romantic tradition, Braunfels was well known as a composer between the two World Wars but fell into oblivion after his death. There is now something of a renaissance of interest in his works. His opera Die Vögel, based on the play The Birds by Aristophanes, was recorded and has been successfully revived. Braunfels composed music in a number of different genres, not only operas, but also songs, choral works and orchestral, chamber and piano pieces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Braunfels

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Hansjörg Albrecht (born 1972 in Freiberg) is a German conductor, organist and harpsichordist. Albrecht received his first musical education as a member of the Dresdner Kreuzchor and studied church music and organ in Hamburg and Cologne with Gerhard Dickel and Thierry Mechler. He is Artistic Director of the Münchener Bach-Chor (since 2005) and permanent Guest Conductor of the Bach-Collegium München. Albrecht became Artistic Director of the Hamburg Sinfonietta in 2009 and, in parallel with his conducting, has also built up an international reputation as organist and harpsichordist.
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Albrecht-Hansjorg.htm
http://hansjoerg-albrecht.com/

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