Camilla Nylund / Helmut Deutsch / Song Recital

Liederabend Camilla Nylund

Pieces ofRichard Strauss, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alexander Zemlinsky, Gustav Mahler u. a.

Tarmo Peltokoski & Camilla Nylund

The concert will be broadcast on 14 May 2024 at 8.03 pm on Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Karina Canellakis | Camilla Nylund

The concert opens with Serenade in E-flat major for 13 wind instruments (op. 7), composed by Richard Strauss at the age of 17. This journeyman piece already sparkles with the typical Straussian inflection. His Four Lieder of 1894 (op. 27), sung by Camilla Nylund, are gems of the late-romantic repertoire. Five years later Arnold Schoenberg wrote his string sextet Transfigured Night after a poem by Richard Dehmel. Poised between late romanticism and the burgeoning modern era, this gripping work was arranged for string orchestra in 1917, producing an even more sophisticated interplay of solo and ensemble passages.

Iván Fischer & Camilla Nylund

Iván Fischer & Camilla Nylund

Camilla Nylund / Angélique Kidjo

In his Reflektor festival, André Heller brings very different artists together on the Elbphilharmonie stage. One of the internationally most sought-after opera singers, Camilla Nylund, meets Angélique Kidjo from Benin, the new »Mama Africa«, who received euphoric acclaim in March 2023 at her own Reflektor festival in the Elbphilharmonie. André Heller’s impressive portfolio of activities includes the art of opera directing, and the Finnish star-soprano Camilla Nylund is one of his favourite singers. In winter 2019/20, he directed Richard Strauss’s »Rosenkavalier« at the Staatsoper Berlin, with Nylund as the Marschallin. And the two soon cooked up another project: Nylund singing orchestral arrangements of classics from the Great American Songbook. The singer – who perfected her art performing Strauss and Wagner – succeeds in both expressing and reining in the power and silkiness of her dramatic soprano voice in a way that is faithful to the spirit of jazz. »Her unique gift, her flexibility, her curiosity, her virtuosic mastery of power, and her emotional warmth« are all qualities Heller admires in Nylund. All this can also be said of Angélique Kidjo, the best-known voice of contemporary African music. After her acclaimed Reflektor festival in spring 2023, Kidjo needs no introduction. For her upcoming performance in the Elbphilharmonie, she has commissioned new arrangements of soulful African songs for voice with orchestral accompaniment. The result is a programme of songs from very different cultures, performed by two great representatives of their art – it will be fascinating to see how it all comes together into one whole.

Sabine Devieilhe / Song Recital

French singer Sabine Devieilhe is currently on a roll. The Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bavarian State Opera, the Salzburg Festival – everyone is clamouring for her clear-as-a-bell soprano. She recently impressed in the Elbphilharmonie as Micaëla in Georges Bizet’s opera »Carmen«. Fortunately, she is not only addicted to opera, but also to song. Together with her long-time piano partner Mathieu Pordoy, she sings her way through a whole cosmos of loving lullabies by Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss and Edvard Grieg at the Elbphilharmonie. In the second half of the concert, she juxtaposes Strauss’ »Mädchenblumen« about four female characters with the female perspective of Lili Boulanger’s songs. With works by Germaine Tailleferre and Cécile Chaminade, Devieilhe brings two other French female composers to the stage who otherwise often lag behind the voices of their male colleagues. Of course, the chanson icon Édith Piaf and her »Hymne à l’amour« should not be missing in such a frenzy of love.

Katharina Konradi / Catriona Morison / Song Recital

France calls the German art song »Le lied«. This resonates respect for this world-famous phenomenon, but also a lot of autonomy at the same time. The French art song is actually very self-confidently called »mélodie«. With Katharina Konradi and Catriona Morison, two equally top-class singers present a programme which delightfully contrasts Schumann and Brahms’ songs with their French contemporaries. Katharina Konradi is best known to the Hamburg audience from the local State Opera, where you could already have experienced her as an ensemble member in numerous leading roles. Catriona Morison’s award-winning mezzo-soprano impresses with its »warm-earthy timbre and excellent clarity«, as the FAZ wrote about one of her song recitals. The political and military conflicts between Germany and France in the 19th century did not stop even when it came to art – many French composers wanted to audibly break away from their neighbours. However, this does not mean that people had closed their ears to sounds beyond the border. France’s most important song composer, Gabriel Fauré, loved the classical song form just as much as Brahms. Ernest Chausson gravitated more to Richard Wagner’s free recitative. As repertoire gems, the singer duo have brought along songs by a sister duo: the opera diva Maria Malibran died at just 28 years old and, in addition to umpteen thousands of fans, also left behind a handful of songs. Her sister Pauline Viardot-García, conversely, became very old – and is one of France’s composers absolutely worth rediscovering!

Lea Desandre / Thomas Dunford / Song Recital

Jean-Baptiste Lully once mocked the sound of the lute as a »mosquito hum«. Fortunately, not all composers saw it like this and appreciated its bright and silvery sound very much. When Thomas Dunford strums the lute, it becomes a heavenly partner for Lea Desandre’s agile mezzo soprano. And does so through all eras: her programme »Idylle« (Paradise) bridges the baroque and chanson. Her programme includes composers such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier; the familiar Eurovision fanfare stems from his »Te Deum«. Above all, however, a lot that is unfamiliar and worth discovering rings out from the baroque via impressionism to the chanson of the 20th century, for instance by the two charismatic chansonnières Barbara and Françoise Hardy. Dunford also lets his lute sound solo from time to time, however – the perfect way to experience this exquisite instrument in all its facets.

Mahler Festival: Song recital Alma Mahler and friends

For four days, the Recital Hall is dedicated to Mahler's most beautiful songs. A special recital is dedicated to his wife Alma, combining pieces by her with those by friends. Perhaps today's most important Lieder accompanist, pianist Julius Drake, flanks his favourite vocalists during all these concerts. Today you will hear French soprano Axelle Fanyo, a 'true storyteller' according to Forum Opéra. She shares the stage with one of the greatest Dutch talents, baritone Raoul Steffani.Austrian Alma Maria Schindler was introduced to her future husband, Gustav Mahler, by her composition teacher Zemlinsky. Under Mahler's name, she would become known - but never primarily as a composer. Mahler did not want his wife to write any more music, and Alma herself also had doubts about her work. Although most of it has been lost, her late-romantic, often melancholic songs are still widely performed. Here today in the Recital Hall, they alternate with pieces by friends and acquaintances. Axelle Fanyo and Raoul Steffani perform songs by Ernst Krenek, Mahler's son-in-law. You will also hear works by Berg, Korngold and Stravinsky.