Dorothea Roschmann

Dorothea Röschmann – Portraits (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:34 minutes | 1019 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Dorothea Röschmann releases her new recital album including well known songs by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Wolf. She is accompanied by Malcolm Martineau who is recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation.

‘The idea for this program of female portraits took seed a long time ago, when I was studying in London with the wonderful teacher, Vera Rozsa. I used to make frequent pilgrimages to the extraordinary National Portrait Gallery where one is surrounded by the most imposing portraits of British personalities and royalty, such as the Tudors and Queen Elizabeth I, as well as countless figures from British history – poets, physicians and so on – all concentrated and condensed within the confines of the building.

A portrait represents a very intense encounter with a person and you believe you know them better after having studied the picture for some time. It can only give you a glimpse of the personality, but also creates an impression of how the person wanted to be portrayed. In songs, a portrait is the musical interpretation of a fictionalized person from literature (Gretchen, Mignon), or real life (Mary Stuart), but the process of character portrayal and trying to get deeper and deeper through different layers, has to happen musically. As a portrait, it can only attempt to portray a snapshot of all the emotions of the character but the longer you live with a song, the more you find in it, as in all music.

This fascination with character interpretation in song and in opera, led to my desire to put together a programme with portraits that reflect the finely shaded nuances of the figures presented here. In the same way, female characters such as Mignon and Gretchen, created by Goethe, and Mary, Queen of Scots, have stimulated the imagination of poets, composers and artists alike. We have included songs by Richard Strauss as every one of them can be regarded as a miniature mood portrait.

The original Schubert setting of ‘Gretchens Bitte’ is only a fragment of Goethe’s poem so we have chosen Benjamin Britten’s ‘complete’ version as it gives a more comprehensive characterization of Gretchen.’ Dorothea Röschmann.

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Dorothea Röschmann – Mozart Arias (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 955 MB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

German soprano Dorothea Röschmann has been a staple of Mozart performances in Germany and Austria. When you first hear her voice in one of the Mozart standards — sample “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro” from The Marriage of Figaro (track 3) — it sounds like something has misfired, and that you’d rather hear the singer in the likes of Mahler (whom she has also sung a good deal). If you are looking for creamy Mozart singing, look elsewhere; Röschmann has a dark sound, with a bit of mud to it. But put the aria in context, as you would when hearing an entire opera, and Röschmann begins to make a great deal more sense: dramatic sense. She falls toward the actress end of the singer-actress spectrum, certainly, but she’s capable of quiet high notes that will give you a chill because they express the nature of the character involved, tragic or comic. Röschmann offers a short program with a pair of arias from Idomeneo, K. 366, and a pair from La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621, plus the scene Bella mia fiamma, addio!, K. 528. None of these is an orthodox choice, and all fit her powerful voice. The Swedish Radio Symphony under Daniel Harding provides sensitive support, and it’s also significant that the graphics really invite you in to find out what is going on here. This is fresh Mozart indeed, from a singer emerging as an international star.

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