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Monthly Archive: October 2019

Edith Mathis at the Lucerne Festival – Audite

Edith Mathis at the Lucerne Festival – Audite

by | Oct 2, 2019 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews

Edith Mathis at the Lucerne Festival = MOZART: 5 Concert Arias; BARTOK: 5 Village Scenes, SZ. 78;  BRAHMS: 5 Songs from Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO 33; SCHUMANN: 9 Songs from Myrthen, Op. 25; R. STRAUSS: 3 Songs; Wolf: “Auch kleine Dinge koennen” from The Italian Songbook – Edith Mathis, soprano/ Karl Engel, piano – Audite 95.647, 78:31 (9/6/19) [Distr. by Naxos] ****: Swiss soprano Edith Mathis (b. 1938) has made an international reputation for her work in Mozart opera, to the extent that her duet with Gundula Janowitz featured in the film The Shawshank Redemption became symbolic of the power of music to lift an oppressed population of prisoners into a transcendent realm of beauty and hope. A veteran of opera work with conductors Karajan, Bohm, and Bernstein, Mathis possesses a strong and vibrant vocal instrument, ideal for the Austrian and German repertory, though Mathis has ventured into the French world of Berlioz and Faure. The present Lucerne lieder recital (3 September 1975) enjoys the piano accompaniment of Swiss veteran pianist Karl Engel (1923-2006). Edith Mathis opens with Mozart’s 1775 setting of Mozart’s Das Veilchen, K. 476, from a poem by Goethe: here, a young woman plucks “a demure, good rose,” […]