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Track Listing:

1
Brahms: Botschaft op. 47 no. 1
 
2
Brahms: Wie bist du meine Konigin op 32 no. 9
 
3
Brahms: Meine Liebe ist Gr?n op. 63 no. 5
 
4
Brahms: An eine Aolsharfe op. 19 no. 5
 
5
Brahms: Feldeinsamkeit op. 86 no. 2
 
6
Brahms: Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer
 
7
Brahms: Rede, Madchen, allzu liebes
 
8
Brahms: Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut
 
9
Brahms: O die Frauen
 
10
Brahms: Was des Abends sch?ne Rothe
 
11
Brahms: Die grune Hopfenranke
 
12
Brahms: Ein kleiner, hubscher Vogel
 
13
Brahms: Wohl schon bewandt war es
 
14
Brahms: Wenn so lind dein Augen mir
 
15
Brahms: Am Donaustrande
 
16
Brahms: O wie sanft die Quelle
 
17
Brahms: Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen
 
18
Brahms: Schlosser auf, und mache Schlosser
 
19
Brahms: Vogelein durchrauscht die Luft
 
20
Brahms: Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar
 
21
Brahms: Nachtigall, sie singt so schon
 
22
Brahms: Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe
 
23
Brahms: Nicht wandle, mein Licht
 
24
Brahms: Es bebet das Gestrauche
 
25
Brahms: Das Madchen spricht op. 107 no. 2
 
26
Brahms: Wir wandelten op. 96 no. 2
 
27
Brahms: Unbewegte laue Luft op. 57 no. 8
 
28
Brahms: Mit vierzig Jahren
 
29
Brahms: Steig auf, geliebter Schatten
 
30
Brahms: Mein Herz ist schwer
 
31
Brahms: Sapphische Ode
 
32
Brahms: Kein Haus, keine Heimat
 
33
Brahms: Verzicht, o Herz auf Rettung
 
34
Brahms: Finstere Schatten der Nacht
 
35
Brahms: An jeder Hand die Finger
 
36
Brahms: Ihr schwarzen Augen
 
37
Brahms: Wahre, wahre deinen Sohn
 
38
Brahms: Rosen steckt mir an die Mutter
 
39
Brahms: Von Gebirge Well auf Well
 
40
Brahms: Weiche Graser im Revier
 
41
Brahms: Nagen am Herzen fuhl
 
42
Brahms: Ich kose suss mit der und der
 
43
Brahms: Alles, alles in den Wind
 
44
Brahms: Schwarzer Wald, dein Schatten
 
45
Brahms: Nein, Geliebter, setze dich
 
46
Brahms: Flammenaugen, dunkles Haar
 
47
Brahms: Zum Schluss: Nun, ihr Musen, genug
 

Various :

Brahms Lieder - Live from Verbier

Brahms Lieder, Live from Verbier - Featuring four star singers and two star pianists

This album is the first release of the live concert from the 2003 Verbier Festival.  The full evening of Brahms lieder features star singers Andrea Rost, Magdalena Ko?ená, Matthew Polenzani and Thomas Quasthoff who are joined by two great pianists: Yefim Bronfman and James Levine.  The evening ranges from solo lieder to the Liebeslieder Waltzes opp. 52 and 65.  The album is released on June 10, 2016.

Fresh from his exertions with his Requiem, Brahms nonchalantly dismissed his first set of LiebesliederWalzer in a letter to his publisher as "trifles", though he was also confident of their appeal. "I will gladly risk being called an ass if [they] don't give a few people pleasure", he added. Together with their sequel collection, Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer, they have indeed done that, and did so from the start: in response to popular demand, Brahms also composed a four-hand piano arrangement and later an orchestral suite. His labelling of the original score as for "piano and voices ad libitum" seemed like an invitation – particularly to amateurs – to present these convivial waltz-songs in whatever form people chose.

Paired with the larger chamber songs on this program are solo sets for each singer. The accompanied solo song is essentially about intimacy, not solitude, and Brahms's mastery of this art-form allowed him to create a unique amalgam of profundity and pathos, with the music magically mirroring the words. The source of the words in the first two solo songs delivered here by Matthew Polenzani was a favorite one for many composers of the German-speaking world: German translations of the poems of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz inspired composers including Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wolf, Strauss and Schoenberg to try their hand. The first sung here addresses the breeze playing round the beloved's head, while the Liebestod celebrated in the second turns on that quintessentially Persian opposition between fresh flowering roses and a parched desert. The third is the setting of a poem by Felix Schumann, the youngest of Clara's children, who was already suffering from the tuberculosis which was to kill him: this song was a loving gesture by Brahms for which Clara was touchingly grateful.

Performed in the spirit of true chamber music, with characterful voices and a feeling of mutual sympathy, the singers and their accompanists display a wide range of mood, color, accentuation, blend and individuality. High in the francophone Swiss Alps, the Verbier Festival has long functioned as a musical laboratory in which hitherto untried combinations of singers and instrumentalists are put together, and this live recording reflects that tradition at its most successful.