Description
Alma Mahler, lovers & friends
Raoul Steffani, baritone
Julius Drake piano
Challenge Classics, CC720015
In this album, Alma Mahler, lovers and friends, Julius Drake and I guide our listeners to a world of passion, beauty and intellectual inspiration: Vienna at the outset of the 20th century. An era of great affluence and unprecedented artistic blossoming where music, literature and the visual arts coalesced in a quite unique way. In this effervescent cultural environment, Alma Mahler was a muse and a young composer at the focal point of a range of influential movements. The deeply-felt emotions, aesthetic refinement and inner unease that characterised this period can all be heard in her own music and in that of the composers in her circle, represented on this album by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hans Pfitzner, Franz Schreker, Bruno Walter and Alexander Zemlinsky.
I.
1. Alma Mahler Die stille Stadt (Dehmel)
2. Hans Pfitzner Abendrot (Lienhard) Op. 24/4
3. Alexander Zemlinsky Frühlingstag (Siebel), Op. 2, Book 2/1
4. Bruno Walter Des Kindes Schlaf (Eichendorff)
5. Erich W. Korngold Abendlandschaft (Eichendorff), Op. 5/4
II.
6. Alma Mahler In meines Vaters Garten (Hartleben)
7. Hans Pfitzner Ist der Himmel darum im Lenz so blau (Leander), Op. 2/2
8. Franz Schreker Frühling (Lemayer), Op. 4/2
9. Alexander Zemlinsky Geflüster der Nacht (Storm), Op. 2/3
10. Erich W. Korngold Sommer (Trebitsch), Op. 9/6
III.
11. Alma Mahler Laue Sommernacht (Bierbaum)
12. Hans Pfitzner Venus Mater (Dehmel), Op. 11/4
13. Franz Schreker Sommerfäden (Leen), Op. 2/1
14. Alexander Zemlinsky Empfängnis (Wertheimer) Op. 2 Book 2/6
IV.
15. Alma Mahler Bei dir ist es traut (Rilke)
16. Hans Pfitzner Sehnsucht (Liliencron), Op. 10/1
17. Alexander Zemlinsky Entbietung (Dehmel), Op. 7/2
18. Erich W. Korngold Liebesbriefchen (Honold), Op. 9/4
19. Franz Schreker Traum (Leen), Op. 7/3
V.
20. Alma Mahler Ich wandle unter Blumen (Heine)
21. Franz Schreker Im Garten unter der Linde (Becher)
22. Alexander Zemlinsky Selige Stunde (Wertheimer), Op. 10/2 23. Hans Pfitzner Nachts (Eichendorff) Op. 26/2
24. Erich W. Korngold Glückwunsch (Dehmel) Op. 38/1
Total time: 57’52
Release date 16 May 2025
