Fanie Antonelou & Kerstin Mork: Affinities - Greek and German Art Songs
Sheet Music

SKU: NX.BIS-2439

Composed by Alexander Von zemlinsky, Anton Beer-Walbrunn, Arnold Schoenberg, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Dimitrios Lialios, Emilios Riadis, Kurt Weill, Ludwig Thuille, Manolis Kalomiris, Nikos Skalkottas, Philipp Jarnach, and Yannis Constantinidis. Classical. Hybrid SACD. Naxos #BIS-2439. Published by Naxos (NX.BIS-2439).

The Greek soprano Fanie Antonelou and German pianist Kerstin Mork here join forces in an exciting project, entitled 'Affinities'. In a carefully constructed sequence of 23 songs, they explore the kinship between Greek and German art songs - a varied one, filtered through friendships, family connections and teacher-pupil relationships. All the composers represented on the album studied and/or worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the three great German-speaking musical centres - Vienna, Munich and Berlin - and include figures both well known (Schoenberg, Weill, Skalkottas and Mitropoulos) and less familiar (Emilios Riadis, Dimitrios Lialios, Ludwig Thuille). With twelve composers and even more poets involved, the subject matter of the individual songs is diverse indeed - from a cafe scene in Berlin (Der Abschiedsbrief by Kurt Weill in cabaret mode) to a hymn to Aphrodite, set by Dimitri Mitropoulos in a highly expressionistic free atonal idiom inspired by Schoenberg.