Anna Lucia Richter & Ammiel Bushakevitz – Licht! 800 Years of German Lied (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:13:42 minutes | 680 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
After her Schumann disc (CC 72867), we are glad to present a new disc by great mezzosoprano Anna Lucia Richter. The theme of of the disc is: Light. The repertoire encompasses eight hundred years of German Lieder.
“[her] bright, clean, focused tone, precise diction and keen sense of drama will be familiar from her performances in an impressively wide-ranging portfolio.” – Gramophone on A.L.Richter:
With the present programme we want to explore the history of the German Lied throughout a period spanning some 800 years, from that first light of dawn represented by the earliest music scored with modern notation – courtly love songs by Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445) – down to such present-day emissaries of the Lied tradition as Aribert Reimann and Wolfgang Rihm. In between we find: J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, F. Hensel, Wolf, Berg and Eisler.
The programme is rounded off, however, by the work of a political exile, Kurt Weill: namely, Berlin im Licht. This work appears initially to be no more than a love-song to the future of the electric light bulb: “Turn on the light; so you can see what’s wrong and what is right”. The deeper meaning was soon thrown into relief by the blotting out, within a few years of its composition, of both the light and the right to which Kurt Weill aspired and Germany’s swift descent into the darkness of dictatorship and war. A spark, however, still remained.
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Schumann Quartett & Anna Lucia Richter – Intermezzo (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:21 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
Founded in 2007, the Schumann Quartett (not to be confused with the Schumann Quartet made up of Christian Favre, piano, Tedi Papavrami, violin, Dorin Matea, viola and François Guye, cello) first studied with the Alban Berg Quartet, and then in Madrid with Günter Pichler. It’s a story of three brothers, Erik, Ken and Mark Schumann who were born in Cologne to German, Romanian and Japanese parents, and who were joined by viola player Liisa Randalu. The career of this young ensemble got off to a flying start after they took first prize at the Bordeaux international string quartet competition. Taking full advantage of the esteem of great old artists, they also play chamber music with Menahem Pressler and Sabine Meyer.
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NDR Radiophilharmonie, Andrew Manze, Anna Lucia Richter, Robin Tritschler – Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 52, MWV A18 “Lobgesang” (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:03:41 minutes | 628 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
With its combination of three instrumental movements, followed by a cantata with three soloists and chorus, Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony “Lobgesang [Hymn of Praise]” is highly original from a conceptual point of view. The piece is a milestone in the history of the symphonic form, stretching the seams of the symphony genre even further than Beethoven had dared with his “Choral” Ninth. In his Lobgesang, Mendelssohn achieved nothing less than the artistic destruction of the conceptual opposition of vocal and instrumental music. Here they enter into a relationship of constructive, mutual support in the service of music. Moreover, the Biblical lyrics express Mendelssohn’s deeply-felt religiosity. This album completes Pentatone’s Mendelssohn Symphonies series with the NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Andrew Manze. After winning the Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2017 for their recording of Symphonies 1 & 3 and the positive reception of Symphonies 4 & 5, expectations are high for this final piece of the puzzle. On this album, the NDR Radiophilharmonie and Andrew Manze join forces with the NDR Chor and WDR Rundfunkchor, as well as with an excellent cast of soloists: sopranos Anna Lucia Richter and Esther Dierkes and tenor Robin Tritschler.
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Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Anna Lucia Richter, Jakub Hrůša – Symphony No. 4 in G Major (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:27 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Accentus Music
Some orchestras more than others reveal with natural acuity the sonic and poetic imagination of a composer. For Mahler, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra seems the ideal instrument. Something very deep in the textures of this orchestra invariably sets it apart: the acoustic space always seems wider than the senses might suggest; the sound takes the time to live, in the moment and in its extension. The orchestra immediately moves Mahler’s world away from a post-romanticism that diminishes him, and likewise it declines to plunge him into excessive modernity. This is not Klemperer, Bernstein or Boulez. This is a very singular world, whose rhetoric is really nourished by the freedom granted to each timbre, and by the combination of what makes them unique. In concert, the experience remains as memorable as it is breathtaking. Parisians for example had the chance, in February 2019, to hear the Third Symphony at the Philharmonie by the same artists, then on tour, at an evening performance recorded by France Musique.
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Georg Nigl, Andreas Staier, Anna Lucia Richter, Petra Müllejans, Roel Dieltiens – Bach Privat (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:54 minutes | 1,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This recording is an invitation to immerse ourselves in the musical inner circle of the Bach family. We are familiar with Johann Sebastian Bach as a composer of genius, but we know little about his family life, with the exception of the famous Clavierbüchlein (Little keyboard book) that the forty-year-old composer gave as a present in 1725 to his second wife Anna Magdalena, his junior by sixteen years. This manuscript is a unique document of the music the family played together. It provides us with a point of reference for the ‘programmes’ of these domestic concerts: it contains short keyboard pieces and songs alongside extended arias taken from the church cantatas, as well as chamber music. Bach and his two eldest sons were not only virtuoso harpsichordists but also excellent violinists, while the composer’s son-in-law Bach, J. C. Altnickol, played the cello and was an outstanding double bass player. Anna Magdalena Bach and her oldest stepdaughter both contributed as singers. And the still young children of the second marriage participated by playing easy pieces on their father’s various keyboard instruments. The musicians and singers on this recording, all eminent exponents of Bach and of Baroque music in general, have come together here to bring these exceptional moments back to life.
Read more![Anna Lucia Richter, Ammiel Bushakevitz - Brahms: Lieder (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/10/01/k2btzuvy14ihc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Anna Lucia Richter, Ammiel Bushakevitz – Brahms: Lieder (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:06 minutes | 898 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © PentaTone
On her third Pentatone album Brahms Lieder, Anna Lucia Richter returns to the German lied, making her recording debut as a mezzo-soprano with a recital of Brahms songs, together with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. Brahms is particularly suitable for this recording debut as his songs fit the mezzo-soprano voice like a glove, and the pieces presented here range from love poetry and dark Romanticism to folk songs, including the world-famous Wiegenlied. Richter’s profound engagement and knowledge of the German lied is perceivable in each song she performs, as well as in her insightful liner notes text for the booklet, in which she links the project to the notion of twilight (Dämmerung). Bushakevitz’s poetic playing offers the perfect tone for both the gloomy and the idyllic pieces.
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Anna Lucia Richter, Ensemble Claudiana & Luca Pianca – Il delirio della passione (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:23 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Punctuated by the tambourines which now appear to be inevitable on all recordings of Baroque music, this “Delirio della passione” (Delirium of passion) flies the colours of eroticism, both figuratively, and literally, on the image on the cover. This recital by soprano Anna Lucia Richter, at ease with Mahler as with seventeenth-century Italian opera, is devoted to a good dozen secular pieces by Monteverdi from his operas and cycles of love madrigals. Conducting the Claudiana Ensemble while playing his instruments (archluth, theorbo, chitarrone), Luca Pianca makes this music twirl, and gives it the character of a frantic dance. A whole theatre of amorous passions is represented here. It is an expression of a burning sensuality in search of multicultural connections. After all, the Venice of these days looked to the East. – François Hudry
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Anna Lucia Richter – Heimweh: Schubert Lieder (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:56 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
On her PENTATONE debut album, young German star soprano Anna Lucia Richter explores the heart-wrenching, timeless and universal feeling of Heimweh (homesickness) through a collection of extraordinary Schubert songs. Richter approaches the notion of Heimweh from several perspectives: from that of queens, young girls and shepherds to that of soldiers, dwarfs and gravediggers. The repertoire consists of the original, German-language version of Ave Maria, three Mignon songs (Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Heiss micht nicht reden and So lasst mich scheinen), the sinister Der Zwerg, the expansive flower ballad Viola and many others. Richter is accompanied by pianist Gerold Huber, with whom she has formed a congenial Lieder tandem in the last years. They are joined by clarinettist Matthias Schorn on the final song of the program, the quasi concert aria Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.
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