Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher
PRE-ORDER: This item will be shipped with the aim to deliver on release day.
Release Date: 13 June 2025
Label: MDG
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 760623235721
Composer/Series: Louis Durey Melodies
Description
MDG's multi-award-winning Les Six anthology series showcases the entire spectrum of an epoch. This installment is dedicated to Louis Durey, the eccentric outsider of Le groupe des Six. Holger Falk's incredibly agile baritone and tremendous tonal range accompanied by Steffen Schleiermacher's sensitivity, verve and virtuosity on the piano yet again take the benchmark up a notch in art song excellence.
Hommage a Erik Satieis like an ironic theatre scene in a song: Charlie Chaplin makes an appearance, as well as screaming fish, eavesdropping elephants, some well-behaved musicians practising diminished chords; even an enchanting virtuoso piano cadenza... Musically, it is oriented towards Satie's Style depouille, with some rhythms having wafted over from Stravinsky.
Louis Durey was the first French composer to study the music of Arnold Schoenberg intensively. In Deux Lieder Romatiques, based on poems by Heinrich Heine, Durey layers increasingly shrill chords which unfold above an inexorable E-flat pedal, which in their structure of fourths certainly seem like an echo of Schoenberg's music.
In the song cycle Vergers set to Rilke's enigmatic poems, Durey goes harmonically and melodically far beyond his earlier compositions with enigmatic, ambiguous music reminiscent of Schoenberg, Messiaen, or even Philip Glass. The independence of the vocal part and the piano accompaniment is striking: both seem to move in separate harmonic and melodic worlds which only occasionally intersect.
Tracklisting
Karl-Andreas Kolly
Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher
Anna Pikulska
Tatjana Vorobjova
Steffen Schleiermacher
Ma'alot Quintett, Trio Roseau
Cologne Chamber Choir, Collegium Cartusianum, Peter Neumann
Stephen Marchionda
Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk; Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk; Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk; Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk; Steffen Schleiermacher
Holger Falk; Steffen Schleiermacher
