Ulf Bästlein

Ulf Bästlein – Zeisl: Art Songs (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:03 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

“Melody is the heart of music – and you can’t construct melodies. They are the essence of a musical gift”. This was the firm belief of Erich Zeisl, who in the 1930s was considered one of the most promising musical talents in Austria. Zeisl mastered the most disparate of musical styles, and although his output was firmly rooted in the Romantic idiom, he permanently pushed its harmonic boundaries. Central to Zeisl’s output was the lied, but having been silenced by the Nazis in 1938 he composed no more lieder in exile in America. It is shameful that these works which have such an important place in the history of music and ideas are only now made accessible to a wider public.

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Ulf Bästlein – Eine schöne Welt ist da versunken: Balladen, Legenden und Lieder von Martin Plüddemann (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:02:11 minutes | 2,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

Martin Plüddemann was a pivotal figure in the revival and modernisation of the art of ballad composition. He revered Carl Loewe and Richard Wagner and this confluence of influences allowed him to explore the close relationship between ballad, opera and “music drama”, not least through the use of Leitmotifs, quasi-orchestral accompaniment or in the piano anticipating or recalling the vocal line. He set the finest poets – Uhland, Müller, Goethe, Heine and Burns among them – and shows a comprehensive mastery of the genre, whether in themes of medievalism, nationalism, the supernatural or in his delightful essays in humour.
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