Goerne sounded intent on finding a balance between seriousness and sheer sensual allure.

—San Francisco Chronicle

BBC Proms 2009: Mahler Kindertotenlieder—Matthias Goerne with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and Jonathan Nott

Program

MAHLER: Ich atment' einen linden Duft; Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen; Es sungen drei Engel; Das irdische Leben; Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen; Wenn dein Mütterlein; Urlicht; Ich bin de Welt abhanden gekommen; Revelge; and Der Tamboursg'sell
SHOSTAKOVICH: Morning, Op. 145, No. 2; Separation, Op. 145, No. 4; Night, Op. 145, No. 9; Eternity, Op. 145, No. 11; Dante, Op. 145, No. 6; and Death, Op. 145, No. 10

Encore:
BEETHOVEN: An die Hoffnung, Op. 94

About This Performance

Matthias Goerne enthralls audiences with his sensual and beguiling approach and “crushed velvet” baritone (Financial Times, London), and is acclaimed as the master of Lieder today. Songs from the German Classical, Romantic and modern repertoires glow through his burnished tone and the smoldering earthiness of his style. Leif Ove Andsnes shines a bright, passionate interpretive light on everything he performs.

Read a recent SF Classical Voice interview with Matthias Goerne…

This performance is made possible in part through the generous support of the
Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Artist Biography

Highly praised for his warm, fluid baritone voice and his profound interpretations, Matthias Goerne is one of the most internationally sought-after vocalists and a frequent guest at renowned festivals and concert halls including Carnegie Hall, New York, Wigmore Hall, London, and Teatro alla Scala, Milano.

Conductors of first rank such as Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa and Simon Rattle as well as eminent pianists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Leif Ove Andsnes, Alfred Brendel and Christoph Eschenbach are among his musical partners.

Goerne performs with leading orchestras including the foremost American orchestras such as Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony as well as London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris. Tours and guest appearances have led him in recent years throughout the whole of Europe, to the USA, Asia and also to Australia.

Since his opera debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1997 Goerne has appeared on principal opera stages in the world, among others, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, Teatro Real in Madrid, the Paris National Opera, the Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. His carefully chosen roles range from Papageno and Wolfram right up to the title roles in Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler and Aribert Reimann's Lear.

Goerne's successful performance has been documented in numerous CD recordings, many of which have received prestigious awards. Currently he records a series of 11 CDs with selected Schubert songs (The Goerne/Schubert Edition) for Harmonia Mundi.

From 2001 through 2005 Matthias Goerne taught as an honorary professor for song interpretation at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Duesseldorf. In 2001 Goerne was appointed Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Born in Weimar, he studied with Hans-Joachim Beyer in Leipzig, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

The Wall Street Journal has called Leif Ove Andsnes, “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation,” while the New York Times has described him as “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power and insight.” With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, the celebrated Norwegian pianist has won worldwide acclaim. As well as giving recitals and playing concertos each season in the world's leading concert halls and with the foremost orchestras, he is also an active recording artist, as well as an avid chamber musician who has joined select colleagues each summer at Norway's Risør Festival of Chamber Music. He will serve as music director of the 2012 Ojai Music Festival.

Andsnes's concerto performances this season included Mozart's Concerto No. 24 with the Dresden Statskapelle and Herbert Blomstedt and a February tour with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, playing the same Mozart concerto and Brahms's second in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Luxembourg, and Paris. He also performed Brahms's Concerto No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and with the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi in Paris and Vienna. At the end of March, Andsnes begins an extensive recital tour with performances in Copenhagen, Bergen, Boston, Chicago, and New York's Carnegie Hall, before returning to Europe for further performances in Rome, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Hamburg, Geneva, and other cities. In the fall, EMI Classics released a recording featuring Andsnes performing Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra. Also with EMI Classics, Andsnes has recorded an album of Schumann's complete Piano Trios with violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, which is released in April 2011.

Andsnes devoted much of his 2009–10 season to Pictures Reframed, a major multi-media project with South African artist Robin Rhode. The culmination of years of planning, the project was toured extensively throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim. At the heart of this collaborative work was Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which Andsnes played while Rhode's illustrations and films, inspired by the piece, were projected onto a specially designed stage set. Schumann's Kinderszenen and a new work by Thomas Larcher that was written for the project in collaboration with Rhode were also integral to the performance. Norway's StatOilHydro was the event's commissioning sponsor, and Norwegian TV documented the project on film. EMI Classics released it on both CD and DVD, including a deluxe exhibition/catalogue-style hardback book with a wide selection of images from the creation and final performance version of the project. The latter won a 2010 ECHO Klassik Prize.

In March 2011, Andsnes signed a new exclusive contract with Sony Classical to record the full cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra over a period of three years. Each performance will be recorded live in concert in Prague with Andsnes directing from the piano. The project culminates in the 2014–15 season when Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra will re-unite for major residencies in North America, Europe and Asia performing the complete Beethoven cycle.

As an EMI Classics artist for many years Andsnes has recorded more than 30 discs spanning repertoire from Bach to the present day. He has been nominated for seven Grammys and awarded many international prizes, including five Gramophone Awards. He has received Norway's most distinguished honor, Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav as well as the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize, awarded by members of parliament to honor prominent Norwegians for their achievements in politics, sports and culture. Andsnes has also received the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award. Saluting his many achievements, Vanity Fair named Andsnes one of the “Best of the Best” in 2005.

Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under the renowned Czech professor Jiři Hlinka. Over the past decade, he has also received invaluable advice from the Belgian piano teacher Jacques de Tiège, who like Hlinka, has greatly influenced his style and philosophy of playing. Andsnes cites Dinu Lipatti, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Sviatoslav Richter, and Géza Anda among the pianists who have most inspired him. Andsnes currently lives in Copenhagen and Bergen, and also spends much time at his mountain home in Norway's western Hardanger area. He is a Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, a Visiting Professor at the Royal Music Conservatory of Copenhagen, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In June 2010, he achieved one of his proudest accomplishments to date: He became a father for the first time.

Links/Downloads

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