Nina Stemme | Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra | Ryan Bancroft

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Kate Lindsey / Anja Bihlmaier

The seven songs by Alma Maria Mahler honour a woman living at the beginning of the 20th century who is too often written into history merely as a spouse rather than an artist in her own right. Kate Lindsey’s interpretation makes it absolutely clear that she is far more than simply a companion to Gustav Mahler! This is followed by music from the far north: No other Scandinavian composer has had more clichés ascribed to them than the Finn Jean Sibelius. His work »Finlandia« became the unofficial anthem of his homeland and, as the 20th century progressed, he pursued his own – not always modernist – musical path. To crown it all, he retreated early on to his isolated home in the wilderness, confirming the cliché of the »brooding Finn«. And yet his first symphony is bold, expressive and overwhelmingly Late Romantic. An important work right at the threshold of Late Romanticism and Modernism. The programme also features music by György Ligeti. It is well known that statements made by composers about their own work should generally be taken with a pinch of salt. But this quote from Ligeti, who once taught in Hamburg, is so full of imagery that it is well worth reading: »Ramifications is, as it were, a terminus in the development from ›dense and static‹ to ›broken-up and mobile‹. In those areas especially where the musical fabric is transparent and tightly enmeshed, a totally new kind of ›uncertain‹ harmony comes through, as though the harmonies of uniform temperature or diatonicism had ›rotted‹. The harmonies have a ›haut goût‹; decay has permeated the music. Ramifications is an example of decadent art.«