Yvonne Prentki - Boulanger, Lang, Smyth & Strauss: Ich sehe still voruberziehen - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Andreas Boyde - Piano Concerto 2 in G Major Op 44 [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/20/1999

Yvonne Bugod - American Piano [COMPACT DISCS] Digipack Packaging date 05/29/2007

Is the greatest song cycle ever written. - at least Glenn Gould is very clear in his judgement of Paul Hindemith's Marienleben. This superlative does not necessarily have to be shared, but it is certainly worth hearing and marvelling at what the 27-year-old, who was already one of Germany's best-known musicians in 1923, achieved. Celebrated as an instrumentalist, Hindemith was considered a bourgeois terror as a composer, provoking with sayings such as InchTonschönheit ist NebensacheInch (beauty of tone is a secondary matter) or InchNimm nehmen keine Rücksicht auf, was Du in der Klavierstunde gelernt hastInch (have no regard for what you learned in piano lessons). In Mary's Life, based on a collection of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, he shows a completely different, internalised side. InchThere is something in these songs that forces and fascinates the listener beyond all habits of conventional song mannerInch wrote a contemporary reviewer, and to this day there is nothing to add. Yvonne Friedli and Constantin Alex make it palpable in their sensitive interpretation.