Franz Schreker - Hans Pfitzner - Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Alma Mahler - Alexander Zemlinsky

Alma Mahler, lovers & friends - Lieder by Korngold, A. Mahler, Pfitzner, Schreker, Walter & Zemlinsky

Raoul Steffani | Julius Drake

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917200157

Catalog number: CC 720015
Releasedate: 16-05-25

- A refined Lieder recital focused on the fascinating figure of Alma Mahler
- All main composers of Vienna at the outset of the 20th century are represented
- An unprecedented flourishing of musical and artistic talents concentrated at that time in the Austro-Hungarian empire capital
- Third recording on Challenge Classics by raising star baritone Raoul Steffani
- Previous releases: CC 72865 with Magdalena Kozena. Classica (FR): Raoul Steffani demonstrates a style and a diction always impeccable. He vocally masters all these lieder which often seek the top of the register and bring a lot of colors.CC 72785, American Record Guide (USA): This is an exceptionally fine debut recording for an already well-developed singer.

In this album, Alma Mahler, lovers and friends, Julius Drake and I guide our listeners to a world of passion, beauty and intellectual inspiration: Vienna at the outset of the 20th century. An era of great affluence and unprecedented artistic blossoming where music, literature and the visual arts coalesced in a quite unique way. In this effervescent cultural environment, Alma Mahler was a muse and a young composer at the focal point of a range of influential movements. The deeply-felt emotions, aesthetic refinement and inner unease that characterised this period can all be heard in her own music and in that of the composers in her circle, represented on this album by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hans Pfitzner, Franz Schreker, Bruno Walter and Alexander Zemlinsky.

Die stille Stadt