Im Abendrot: Songs by Wagner, Pfitzner, Strauss

Featuring

Matthias Goerne
Seong-Jin Cho
Richard Wagner
Hans Pfitzner
Richard Strauss

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Hans Pfitzner's lieder revive the world of Schubert's 'Winterreise' with themes of solitude and impossible love, adding a tragic intensity that the booklet identifies as his modernity.

Composer Biography

Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner, though having parallel careers, had very different attitudes towards the Third Reich: Pfitzner supported it, while Strauss tried to both benefit from and evade responsibility.

Album & Artwork

This album, 'Im Abendrot' (At Sunset), contemplates the 'twilight' of the lied genre, following Matthias Goerne's previous album that considered its 'dawn'.

Composition History

Richard Wagner's 'Wesendonck-Lieder', setting poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, were forerunners to his opera 'Tristan und Isolde', anticipating its major themes and musical style.

Composer Biography

Richard Wagner, a dominant figure in German opera, left the genres of symphony, solo piano works, chamber music, and lied to other composers like Brahms and Grieg.

Historical Context

The year 1949 marked the end of an era for German music, with the deaths of leading composers Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner, both born in the age of Wagner and Brahms.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Mathilde Wesendonck's poems, set by Wagner, cultivated mystery and propriety, never using the word 'love' in her love poems, yet anticipating themes of 'Tristan und Isolde' like joy in sorrow and ecstasy in death.