Description
With the album "Morgenstern", tenor Patrick Grahl dedicates himself to the songs of Johannes Weyrauch. At the heart of the album is music of great inwardness, which dispenses with external effects and draws its power from its focus on words and breath. Weyrauch, who throughout his life cultivated a special relationship with the human voice, found in Morgenstern's poetry a language for existential questions about humanity, hope, and transcendence--particularly impressive in his postwar cycle Erdengang (1946) and the later songs based on texts by Christian Morgenstern from 1964. These works enter into an exciting correspondence with settings of the same poet by Alexander Zemlinsky. While Weyrauch composes from a place of silence and spiritual contemplation, Zemlinsky explores emotional extremes and develops a tonally intense, existentially charged musical language. The program is complemented by songs by Robert Schumann based on poems by Heinrich Heine, which open up a historical resonance space. Here, too, the delicate balance between external movement and inner experience becomes audible. "Morgenstern" is a musical search for the "essence" of the word--a journey through inner landscapes between abyss and hope.
