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Songs of Fate

Anna Lucia Richter, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Jordan de Souza

Format: Digital

The celebrated mezzo-soprano Anna Lucia Richter interprets Gustav Mahler's songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Kindertotenlieder on poems by Friedrich Rückert with great emotional depth and subtle creative power - two orchestral song cycles that illuminate the human condition in all its facets like few others and deservedly belong to the most performed works of this genre in the international concert repertoire. In the song texts from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, published between 1805 and 1808 by Achim von Arnim and Clemens von Brentano, we encounter tender childhood memories and bizarre stories: a colorful world between subtle irony, rustic folk song tone and deep melancholy, which is also reflected in the composer's selection. The dark, poignant counterpoint is formed by the Kindertotenlieder by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), in which the poet processed the pain of the death of two of his children from scarlet fever in the years 1833/34. Mahler selected only five of the more than 400 poems and set the parental pain of loss to music with poignant clarity and moving restraint between 1901 and 1904. His wife Alma was far from enthusiastic about her husband's strange occupation, and their daughter Maria-Anna would die in 1907 from the same disease as Rückert's children. In perfect collaboration with the always excellent Gürzenich Orkest Köln under the direction of Jordan de Souza, Anna Lucia Richter gives Mahler's moving settings a new, very personal dimension with her nuanced voice on this recording for MYRIOS, which is beautifully captured by the label's excellent sound engineering.

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