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Lyric Suite: Berg, Wellesz

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About the Album
Sonnets for Elizabeth Barrett Browning Op. 52

This release unites on record for the first time America's reigning star soprano Renée Fleming and its premier string quartet, The Emersons, to take us on a journey into the twilight world of Vienna in the 1920s and 30s in music imbued with late romanticism and burgeoning modernism. Berg's Lyric Suite is a work of intricate complexity believed to have a secret dedication and to outline a secret programme relating to Berg's affair with Franz Werfel's sister (Werfel was married to Mahler's widow, Alma). Theodor Adorno called the work a latent opera and in its sixth and final movement, the Largo desolato, Berg introduces the soprano voice and quotes Wagner's "Tristan motif" to evoke his doomed, impossible love. This was still secessionist Vienna: a world of paintings by Klimt, psychoanalysis by Freud and a musical life where you could hear Bruno Walter conduct Mahler and Clemens Krauss lead the operas of Richard Strauss. Egon Wellesz's highly expressive setting of Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning was one of the last works he completed before leaving Austria ahead of the Anschluss in 1938. It is heard here in its original version for soprano and string quartet. Barrett-Browning was one of the most popular English poets of the Victoria era, although Wellesz turned to German translations by Rainer Maria Rilke for his setting. Renée Fleming is famed for her intense and luxurious (Evening Standard) performances of Richard Strauss and Korngold, Berg and Mahler. Her sumptuous sound is uniquely suited to this repertoire. As Edward Seckerson wrote of her fin de siècle recital at the Barbican in 2012: We were back in Vienna's golden age and it seemed like that was where she had always belonged.

The poem suggests someone in the depths of despair over love, and Fleming sings in suitably mezza voce fashion through most of the piece, but her impeccable control and ability to sustain seemingly endless phrases is intact. She turns suffering into something sublime.

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Track List

  1. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: I. Allegretto gioviale 3:08
  2. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: II. Andante amoroso 5:45
  3. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: III. Allegro misterioso - Trio estatico 3:19
  4. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: IV. Adagio appassionato 5:35
  5. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: V. Presto delirando - Tenebroso 4:40
  6. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: VI. Largo desolato 5:35
  7. Lyric Suite For String Quartet: Largo desolato (Version with Soprano) 5:58
  8. Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52: 1. Un es geschah mir einst 5:05
  9. Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52: 2. Nur drei jedoch in Gottes ganzen All vernahmen es 3:43
  10. Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52: 3. Du bist da droben im Palast begehrt 3:09
  11. Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52: 4. Ich denk an dich 3:13
  12. Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52: 5. Mir scheint, das Angesicht der Welt verging 4:24
  13. Komm, süsser Tod 2:52

Recording info

Release Date: September 11, 2015
Label: Decca
CD / Download: 1
ASIN: B00UY80FVM