The mezzo-soprano, born in Switzerland, was a member of
the ensemble of the Wiener Staatsoper and Volksoper from
1996 to 1998. She also appears in Berlin, Munich, Barcelona
and at the Salzburg Festival. Besides her opera performances,
she is a regular guest on the international concert stages
Radio-Symphony Orchestra Vienna
Bertrand de Billy, conductor
Kristin Okerlund, piano
Mozart · Wagner · Haydn · Respighi
Mozart´s concert aria KV 505 “Ch´io mi
scordi di te?” – “Non temer, amato bene”
came immediately after the Prague Symphony.
Contrary to all earlier assumptions, it
was composed purely as a concert aria,
distinguished particularly by its use of the solo
piano. Some Mozart biographers interpret this
as meaning that he wrote this work not only
for Nancy Storace but also for himself; however,
this is not important for understanding the
work and is also purely speculative. The text
of this rondo was based on an earlier work,
Mozart´s addition KV 490 to his opera Idomeneo,
written for a concert version performed in
Vienna. The lyrics were therefore written by
Giambattista Varesco and the aria was sung
by Storace, who is known to have been
Mozart´s first Susanna, in an academy on
February 23, 1787. Mozart dated the composition
as of December 26, 1786. In this aria, the
singer personifies the Prince Idamante (who
was sung by a castrato at the premiere in
Munich); he tries to calm his beloved Ilia, who
has reproached him with being in reality the
lover of Elettra, the daughter of the king of
Troy. The solo piano is silent in the recitative
and then vies with the singer throughout the
rondo which follows. The work shows Mozart
at the height of his powers, in his treatment of
both piano and vocal parts.
Wesendonck-Lieder [Wesendonck Songs]
Richard Wagner´s Five Poems for a Female
Voice with Pianoforte Accompaniment are
known to the general public as the so-called
Wesendonck-Lieder, after the authoress of
the texts and partner in the love affair which
Richard Wagner himself described as the
inspiration for the composition of Tristan and
Isolde. However, the authoress could not be
named at the time of publication, and the addition
originally requested by Wagner, that the
work consisted of settings of “amateur
poems”, was only retracted by the publishing
company. Their close connection with the
composition of Tristan and Isolde is not only
seen in the two songs Dreams and In the
Greenhouse, the final versions of which the
composer himself described as studies for
Tristan and Isolde, but also in the exactly
deducible time of their composition at the climax
of the relationship between Richard
Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck, thus parallel
to the composition of the first act of Tristan
and Isolde between Autumn 1857 and
Spring 1858. One indicator that Wagner himself
did not see these single songs from the
most productive part of his career as merely
offshoots of an affair, but by all means took
them seriously as works of art, may also be
attested by the fact that each of these songs
are available in at least two versions, in the
case of the two Tristan studies even in three.
The final composition process was drawn out
to Autumn 1858, when Richard Wagner, as a
consequence of the éclat between the
Wesendonck and Wagner couples in Zurich,
travelled alone to Venice to continue work on
Tristan.
In modern concert programmes, the songs
are more often heard in various orchestral
versions than in the piano original. Wagner
himself only orchestrated Dreams for solo violin
and chamber orchestra; this received its
premiere under his direction on December 18,
1857 at Wesendonck´s house on the occasion
of the poetess´ birthday. The whole cycle was
heard for the first time on July 30, 1862 at the
Villa Schott near Mainz, with the soprano Emilie
Genast and no less a personage than Hans
von Bülow at the piano.
The compositional meticulousness with which
Wagner treated his motifs and musical phrasing
at this time is much more clearly evident
from the solo piano version than in any later
version or even in Wagner´s own score for
Dreams. The song Dreams anticipates the
motifs of the great duet in Act II of Tristan and
Isolde (“O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe” [O sink down, night of love]), and in Greenhouse,
we clearly hear the Prelude to Act III. Although
the three other songs do not directly
anticipate the music of Tristan and Isolde, it is
clear that they were composed in the same
tonal world. The whole cycle has been acclaimed
as one of the masterpieces of German song
ever since it was created.
Influenced by the “Sturm und Drang” movement,
Joseph Haydn´s cantata Arianna á
Naxos retells the story of Ariadne. We find
ourselves in the time after Gluck´s reforms
and various attempts to ascertain the direction
which opera is to take. In 1775, Georg
Bender composed a melodrama which received
much attention, and which Haydn took as
a model for his composition of 1789. In his
cantata for soprano and piano, we find
Ariadne deserted by Theseus on Naxos, and
the singer has to depict the wide range of
emotions from fear to anger, from grief to love,
which vie in her thoughts and memories. In
this version, Ariadne takes her destiny into
her own hands and during a storm, throws
herself off the cliffs into the sea. Haydn uses
vivid tone painting to portray the extremes of
emotion; when Ariadne finally experiences
the full impact of the loss of her beloved, we
experience a masterpiece of musical psychology.
Respighi´s setting of Shelley´s poem The Sunset
was composed in 1914 and received its
premiere in Rome in May of the following
year, sung by the mezzo soprano Chiarina Fino
Savio, to whom it is also dedicated. The poem
is about the death of two lovers. Respighi was
so moved by the poem that his setting became
his own version of the Liebestod [love-death].
He chose the intimate string quartet to
accompany the voice. This version for string
orchestra only differs from the original in the
addition of the double bass. Not only in its
reworking from string quartet to chamber
ensemble is this work related to Schoenberg´s
Transfigured Night or Alban Berg´s Lyric Suite.
The musical structure shows the composer at
the turning point of his career, where he attaches
importance above all to the highly emotional
arrangement of the voice in favour of the
purely formal aspects.