Dietrich Henschel - Busoni: Doktor Faust - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) studied theology and won his first reputation as a poet with the publication in 1748 of the first three songs of his biblical epic Der Messias (The Messiah). Throughout his life his religious and moral poems of experience were admired by, among others, Goethe and the poets of the Göttinger Hainbund. Klopstock spent almost twenty years of his life in Copenhagen, where the Danish King Friedrich V granted him a pension that allowed him to work without worrying on the completion of his Messias. In 1770 Klopstock returned to Germany and lived in Hamburg until his death. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many composers followed the expressed wish of the poet and set many of his works to music. With Schubert's Klopstock settings this tradition finds it's conclusion, with later generations of composers only sporadically devoting attention to his poems. Friedrich von Matthisson (1761-1831) began to study theology at Halle in 1778, but later turned to philology and pedagogy. As travelling companion and private secretary of Princess Luise of Anhalt-Dessau he became a popular member of court society and made many contacts in aristocratic and cultural circles. After the death of the princess he entered the service of King Friedrich I of Württemberg. He was given the title of Confidential Legation Counsel and was Chief Librarian and member of the directorate of the Stuttgart Theatre. In 1828 Matthisson left Stuttgart and returned to the princedom of Anhalt-Dessau. He died in 1831 at Wörlitz. During his lifetime there appeared sixteen authorised editions of his poems of sensibility; he published a twenty-volume anthology of poems and wrote for the important literary journals of his time. In his Memoirs he provides a résumé of his eventful life. His senior, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, was among the poets that he revered from his you

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Winterreise / Schwanengesan [COMPACT DISCS] date 12/07/2008

Even a quarter of a century after the end of his active career as a singer, nothing has changed concerning Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's preeminent status in the history of performing song. It is a above all the Lied performer Fischer-Dieskau who set standards that have remained valid far beyond his time. Vol. 2 of the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Lied-Editon provides an excellent example of Fischer-Dieskau's consummate art of placing special emphasis on the poet's text as the source for varied musical inspiration. On the first album, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Karl Engel undertake performing songs after texts by Goethe from five periods. Similarly, five years later, he and Wolfgang Sawallisch devote their programme at the Salzburg Festival to Joseph Eichendorff, by focusing on three composers who identified particularly strong with the Romantic poet (album 2). Album 3, with songs after texts by poet Richard Dehmel, provides evidence of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's life-long interest in the scope of the repertoire. The set is completed by a programme that embraces InchSongs of the Romantic eraInch by various composers of the 19th century.