MEDIA

Songs of Death and Resurrection

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the lied increasingly took on orchestral garb. The boundary with opera became almost impalpable. That is what Samuel Hasselhorn and Łukasz Borowicz demonstrate here, in a splendid programme mingling smiles and disillusionment, where some of the most characteristic orchestral lieder and operatic arias of this Austro-German ‘fin de siècle’ era blend perfectly together.

I want to thank the Funk foundation who made this recording possible with their generous support!

(Schubert 200 Vol. 1)

The years 2023-2028 mark 200 years since the five last years of Franz Schubert. This leads up to the 200th anniversary of Schubert’s death in Vienna on 19 November 2028. 

In order to pay homage to this important event, baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz have started a multi-genre international project titled “SCHUBERT 200”. A major focus of this project will be the recording of one CD of Schubert’s songs per year for HARMONIA MUNDI, culminating in the year 2028. Each CD will mirror the Lieder that Schubert wrote exactly 200 years earlier.

The “SCHUBERT 200” project will be aimed at a new, young generation of Lieder enthusiasts. The project goal is to and is discover the extent to which Schubert’s songs are relevant to our lives in the 21st century and how this connection can be made tangible.

Lieder by Schubert

His debut recording devoted to Schumann offered a brilliant opportunity to discover the name of Samuel Hasselhorn, a young baritone deeply invested in the art of lieder. With his collaborator Joseph Middleton, he now turns to Schubert, in an insightful programme evoking some of the themes dear to the Viennese master of song: nature, night-time, parting, absence, and death. Both essential and less familiar songs are featured side by side in this poignant depiction of profound self-reflection that can rank among the most moving examples of what the Romantic temperament has ever produced.

Lieder by Schumann

Almost all of the musical settings of poems by Kerner, Chamisso, Andersen and Heine that can be heard in this recital date from 1840, the year in which Schumann immersed himself completely in the song genre and created no fewer than 138 individual songs. "Ah, I can't help it, I want to sing myself to death like a nightingale!" he wrote to his beloved Clara, whom he would marry a year later. Baritone Samuel Hasselhorn, who won first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2018 and was then a member of the Vienna State Opera ensemble for two years, makes his debut at harmonia mundi: a true love letter to the most intimate of all art forms.

Lieder by Schumann and others

For the first time, the concept album »Dichterliebe²« contains two »Dichterliebes« on CD: Schumann's world-famous cycle »Dichterliebe« op. 48 based on poems by Heinrich Heine and a series of scattered musical settings of the same Heine poems by well-known composers of Schumann's time and later, compiled especially for this project.