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Songs by great conductors – Gustav Mahler is probably the first name that springs to mind. However, an array of other conductors whose compositions have on the whole remained unknown also wrote works for voice and piano which are well worth listening to, including Mahler’s contemporary Hans von Bülow as well as representatives of the following generation such as Clemens Krauss and Bruno Walter. This CD is dedicated to them, and the value of this recording is all the greater as this programme of rarities is interpreted by first-class singers, i.e. by Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano) and Michael Volle (baritone). The song settings reflect not only a time of musical change, but also a transformation of literary style. Thus Hans von Bülow chose texts by Goethe, Grimm etc., Bruno Walter wrote song cycles on works by Heine and Eichendorff, and finally Clemens Krauss composed his Eight Songs on texts by Rilke.

Mirror images of intellectual worlds
Songs by conductors Hans von Bülow, Bruno Walter and Clemens Krauss

Y ou possess the composer’s consummate gift in the larger sense of the word.” No less a person than Franz Liszt wrote these words on August 3, 1863. The letter was directed to his friend Hans von Bülow. Richard Wagner agreed with Liszt: “Give vent to your innermost being through being a productive composer,” said the operatic giant to Bülow in 1855. However, Bülow’s attitude towards his creative work was very ambivalent. He is said to have told Liszt that he was born unproductive. Without a doubt, Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) principally wrote musical history as a conductor.

As an untiring advocate of the works of Johannes Brahms, Hector Berlioz and the so-called “New Germans” Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, Bülow did not shy away from scandal, especially in performances of works by the latter. While Eduard Hanslick, the doyen of Viennese critics at the time, and Friedrich Nietzsche both drove wedges between Brahms and Wagner, Bülow saw this music as a logical development from Beethoven via Brahms to Wagner – or, in other words: Music History as the History of Transformations in Musical Form, to quote the title of a significant book by the German- Jewish musical author Paul Bekker.

Yet the Lieder op. 5 (1857) and op. 30 (1884) bear witness to Bülow’s command of form. The question therefore arises: why did Bülow apparently need to justify his creative work? The roots of this lie in artistic and social change. While it was quite normal up to the 19th century for conductors to wield a pen and composers a baton, from Beethoven onwards these roles became increasingly divergent – interestingly in parallel with industrialisation.

Works by conductors are frequently dismissed as “capellmeister music”, yet even today there are conductors who are also significant composers. One only has to think of Pierre Boulez or Peter Eötvös. However, in the late 19th century, it was Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss who composed some of the most important songs by conductors ever written. Mahler admired Bülow, although Bülow for his part had an ambivalent relationship with Mahler. As a conductor, he admired him: Bülow even had Mahler presented with a laurel wreath at an opera gala (according to Bruno Walter, the laurel wreath constantly hung above Mahler’s desk).

However, as Mahler played his Totenfeier – i.e. the first movement of what was to become his 2nd Symphony – to Bülow on the piano, the latter is said to have blocked his ears. “If that is still music, then I no longer understand anything about music!” For Bülow in later life, music ended with Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde; he himself had conducted the premiere of the concert version of the Prelude in Prague on March 25, 1859. Bülow had contributed the ending; Wagner only composed the end of the concert version of the Tristan Prelude in December 1859. Bülow’s conclusion was very well received in its day. According to one critic, it was not possible to discern where Wagner ended and Bülow began without taking a look at the score.

While Bülow was grappling with the socalled New German trend in his tone poems, the songs recorded here owe their origins to the early and peak periods of Romanticism – i.e. the Golden Age of the German Lied with piano accompaniment. They reflect that aspect of Bülow’s creativity and work which emphasised tradition. In contrast, Bruno Walter’s songs on texts by Joseph von Eichendorff and Heinrich Heine – first published in 1910 and 1901/02 respectively – bear witness to a greater or lesser degree to his devotion to the music of his close friend Mahler.

The subtle tragicomedy in Der Soldat (The Soldier) comes from both Mahler and Robert Schumann, while Tragödie 2 (Tragedy 2) is influenced by the majorminor changes and harmonic modulations typical of Mahler. Bruno Walter (1876–1962) was in actual fact the main pioneer among his fellow conductors of the symphonic composer Mahler, a controversial figure in his day whose works were finally banned by the Nazis and in part by the Soviets. It was Walter who conducted the posthumous premieres of Mahler’s 9th Symphony and Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth). At the beginning of his career, he had assisted Mahler at the Hamburg Opera. The young Walter had previously been so deeply impressed by a concert under Bülow that he resolved to become a conductor himself.

In Mahler, Walter saw a teacher and soulmate – this was also due to his own Jewish origins. Even in January 1938, shortly before the invasion by the brown-shirts was celebrated in Austria, Walter performed Mahler’s Ninth with the Vienna Philharmonic. Shortly afterwards, the Nazis forced Walter into exile. In contrast, the Acht Lieder nach Rainer Maria Rilke (Eight Songs from Rainer Maria Rilke) by Clemens Krauss (1893–1954), which were first published in 1920 and frequently worked out orchestrally, reveal a fundamental affinity with Jugendstil.

It was Richard Strauss who published some of his songs in the magazine Jugend, founded in Munich in 1896 (this is what gave Jugendstil its name). With the return to catchy melodies, occasional filigree-like impressionistic ornamentation in the accompaniment and the emphasis on the voice, Strauss transferred Jugendstil to the song genre. Krauss built on this. During his time as the conductor of the Vienna State Opera, he also got to know Strauss personally; from then on, they were joined by close ties of friendship.

Not least, Krauss created the libretto for the opera Capriccio, which was dedicated to him. References to Alban Berg’s Sieben frühen Liedern (Seven Early Songs) of 1907 can also be heard in Krauss’ songs. Before performances of his Acht Lieder, Krauss requested the spoken recitation of Rilke’s poem Initiale: “Out of infinite longings arise / finite deeds like feeble fountains / falling back betimes and trembling. / And yet, though otherwise remaining silent, / our joyful energies – reveal / themselves in these dancing tears.”



Petra Lang, soprano Petra Lang completed studies in the violin before turning to singing. She has since become a much sought-after performer of Wagner’s Brangäne, Kundry, Venus, Sieglinde, Ortrud, Adriano, Bartok’s Judith, Berg’s Marie, Berlioz’ Cassandre, Strauss’ Ariadne and an interpreter of Gustav Mahler’s vocal works.

The singer performs with great orchestras and at renowned opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic under the batons of Abbado, Boulez, Bychkov, Chailly, Chung, Davis, Haitink, Harding, Inbal, Janowski, Jordan, Metha, Muti, Saraste, Sawallisch, Rattle, Runnicles, Tate and Thielemann. Petra Lang Petra Lang has performed at the Salzburg, Bregenz, Edinburgh and Bayreuth Festivals.

She has attended masterclasses given by Fassbaender, Fischer-Dieskau and Schreier, and has worked with Ch. Spencer, M. Martineau, C. Piazzini and W. Rieger. Her repertoire includes songs by Berg, Berlioz, Brahms, Britten, Duparc, Fauré, Liszt, Mahler, Marx, Milhaud, Mozart, Poulenc, Reger, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, Sibelius, Strauss, Wagner, Wolf and Zemlinsky. The mezzo-soprano has given evening song recitals in Amsterdam, Brussels, Darmstadt, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Edinburgh, Feldkirch, Geneva, Ghent, London, Mainz, Munich, New York, Paris and Wiesbaden.

CDs: Tristan and Isolde (Thielemann, Queler), Les Troyens (Colin Davis, 2 Grammys), Le Nozze di Figaro (Harnoncourt), Rossini Stabat Mater (Creed) Mahler II/III (Chailly).

Michael Volle, baritone

Michael Volle – trained by Josef Metternich and Rudolf Piernay – has held permanent posts at opera houses such as Mannheim, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Zurich, and has now developed into an internationally acclaimed singer in his fach.

He has appeared as a guest on international stages and at international festivals such as the Bayreuth Festival (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg/Beckmesser in the new production by Katharina Wagner, 2007), the Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival (Falstaff/Ford, 2007), the Salzburg Festival (new production of Die Gezeichneten (The Branded)/Tamare, 2005), the Berlin Festival Weeks, the Grand Opéra Paris, La Scala in Milan, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Royal Opera House in London (Le Nozze di Figaro/Count, 2006, new production of Salome/Jochanaan, 2008, Lulu/ Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper and Tristan and Isolde/Kurwenal, 2009), the German Opera in Berlin, the Berlin State Operas (Don Giovanni/title role, Le Nozze di Figaro/Count and Ariadne auf Naxos), Dresden (Don Giovanni/title role) and Hamburg (for example Tannhäuser/Wolfram, 2006/2007 and Pélleas et Mélisande/Golaud, 2009). Debut at the Viennese State Opera, 2001/2002 season, re-engaged for Don Giovanni/title role under Seiji Ozawa, February 2004. Fixed employment at the Zurich Opera House (1999 to 2007).

At the beginning of the 2007/2008 season, he moved to the Munich State Opera, where his appearances will include new productions of Eugen Onegin/Onegin, Palestrina/Morone and Wozzeck/Wozzeck.

Extensive concert activities, evening recitals and work with top international orchestras under acclaimed conductors such as Sir Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Charles Dutoit, James Conlon, Valery Gergiev, Antonio Pappano, Kent Nagano, Mstislaw Rostropovich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marek Janowski, Mariss Jansons, Philippe Herreweghe and Franz Welser-Möst bear witness to the international renown of this artist. Radio recordings and television appearances document his artistic creativity, as do various CD and DVD productions.

Adrian Baianu, piano

After graduating from high school, Adrian Baianu studied music in Munich (piano under G. Hefele, song composition under E. Werba, H. Deutsch, N. Shetler and S. Mauser), and musicology, drama and Italian philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Adrian Baianu works as a répétiteur and song accompanist with artists such as Susan Anthony, Wolfgang Brendel, Albert Dohmen, Wolfgang Koch, Petra Lang, Noëmi Nadelmann, Andreas Schmidt, Juha Uusitalo, Michael Volle, Edith Wiens and Elena Zaremba.

He has participated in evening song recitals in Berlin (Comic Opera), Berne, Krakow, Leipzig (Gewandhaus), Munich (Prince Regent Theatre), Savonlinna (opera festival), Stuttgart and Zurich.

CDs: Songs by Enjott Schneider, songs by Franz Schreker, songs by Engelbert Humperdinck and Brahms’ Schöne Magelone.