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MARIA RADNER in Oslo



Maria Radner. Foto: Italartist Austroconcert

Maria Radner
. Foto: Italartist Austroconcert

OSLO: Within a very short time Maria Radner has establish herself as one of the most promising contraltos. Last night (Sunday 2nd October) she made a good recital in the Norwegian National Opera House, where she, with her accompanist Alexander Schmalcz, piano, performed a romance evening with songs by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and the Wesendonck lieder by Richard Wagner.

The songs by Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and last, bot not least Wesendonck Lieder became high lights in the concert. First because this the songs by Johannes Brahms because in theis Radner uses her introverted technique and performed it carefully and soft, without any “dramatic” expressions. It became extremely beautiful.

In the song s by Franz Liszt, which suites Radner very well, we got completely another type of singing, expressively, warm, elegant, virtuose. Espcially O lieb, – O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst is a poem written by Ferdinand Freiligrath, a 19th century German writer. In 1847, Hungarian composer Franz Liszt set the poem to music (soprano voice and piano), and eventually adapted it into his famous Liebesträume No.3. The work is one of Liszt’s most famous and poignant. Liebesträume in German means Dreams of Love (Liebestraum in singular).

The Wesendonck lieder by Richard Wagner suits this  wonderful soloists voice very well

evaluation of most patients. Their use is strongly cheap viagra Lifestyle factors such as relationship issues or substance.

. In addition this became like a syclus, because the audience was asked by a woman in the audience not to applaude between the numbers. As it unfortunately has been done between all the numbers of the first three composrs songs. Unfortunately the audience dont that an artist is building up a programme to hang together. This might be spoiled by the constantly interroption between the songs.

The management should help the artist by writing it in the programme, or, since some of the leadership of the opera was present, could have mentioned, but no, they were just sitting there, doing nothing!

In the Wesendonck lieder we noticed that the soloist enjoyed it and it became an outstanding good ending of the concert. As encores we got Zueignung by Richard Strauss and Brahms Wiegenlied with text both in German and Norwegian.

The concert was attende by a large audience, and the atmosphaere was good. Maria Radners long evening dress in brown/lilla shades was beautiful. Review by Henning Høholt.

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På scene 2 i operaen

Blant de positive prosjekter Den norske Opera & Ballett gjennomfører hører

kammermusikk og resital konsertene på Scene 2. Søndag den 2. oktober var vi som

elsker såkalt «Kleinkunst» møtt opp for å høre på tyske Maria Radner allerede en

stjerne på musikkhimmelen sin unge alder til tross.

De som vil vite mer om den som opptrer og det de opptrer med møter naturlignok

opp til *Introduksjonen ved Scenekanten* som denne gang besto av en samtale

mellom stedfortredende operasjef Anne Gjevang og Musikksjef John Helmer Fiore.

Samtalen deres dreide seg om denne formen for kammermusikk som etter Gjevangs

mening var utdøende og om denne spesielle kunstneren som hadde en såkalt

kontraalt, dvs. en dyp kvinnestemme som også er meget sjelden i vår tid.

De snakket om musikken vi skulle høre, komponert av fire forskjellige komponister,

sanger (romanser/Lieder) som ikke nødvendigvis var naturlige for denne dype

stemmen.

Forventningene ble ganske store også fordi Maria Radner allerede har en betydelig

karriere bak seg ved forskjellige store operahus og under meget kjente dirigenter.

Programmet som Maria Radner hadde lagt opp til var tysk romantikk på høyeste

nivå. Musikken spente fra Franz Schubert til Richard Wagner. Maria Radner har ikke

bare en varm og fast stemme og klarer de høye toner med letthet, hun er også som

kvinne en strålende skjønn person. Hun fremførte sangene med innlevelse og nokså

overbevisende selv om Brahms og Wagner ligger hennes stemme nærmest.

Så fremførte hun Mathilde Wesendoncks dikt, tonsatt av Richard Wagner, på en

kraftfull og bevegende måte. Heldigvis applauderte publikummet ikke mellom hver av

disse sangene slik de hadde gjort før en tilhører i salen hadde bedt om å la være.

Selv om applaus er kunstnernes levebrød (som noen sier) er denne klappingen

mellom sangene en uting og må virke nokså forstyrrende for en solist som prøver å

konsentrere seg.

Maria Radner ble ledsaget av Alexander Schmalcz ved klaveret, en oppmerksom og

varm akkompagnatør.

Tilhørerne ble belønnet med to *Zugaben*, Richard Strauss’ *Zueignung* og det

nydelige *Wiegenlied* av Johannes Brahms som hun for anledningen hadde fått

oversatt til norsk.

Lørdag den 10. februar 2012 skal vi høre henne igjen på Gimle Kino i Richard

Wagners *Götterdämmerung* overført fra Metropolitan Opera i New York.

av Claus Drecker

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In January 2012 Maria Radner will make her debut in Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in March 2012 she will appear in Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Teatro alla Scala Milano and and sing Erda in a concert performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the Leipzig Opera.

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The Wesendonck Lieder is a song composed by Richard Wagner while he was working on Die Walküre. This, and the Siegfried Idyll, are his only two non-operatic works that are still regularly performed.

The cycle is a setting of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Wagner’s patrons. Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zuich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. For a time Wagner and his wife Minna lived together in the Asyl (German for Asylum), a small cottage on the Wesendonck estate.

It is sometimes claimed that Wagner and Mathilde had a love affair; in any case, the situation and mutual infatuation certainly contributed to the intensity of the first act of Die Walküre which Wagner was working on at the time, and the conceiving of Tristan und Isolde; there is certainly an influence on Mathilde’s poems as well.

The poems themselves are in a wistful, pathos-laden style influenced by Wilhelm Müller, the author of the poems used by Schubert earlier in the century
. But the language is more rarefied and intense as the Romantic style had developed
.

Wagner himself called two of the songs in the cycle “studies” for Tristan und Isolde, using for the first-time musical ideas that are later developed in the opera. In Träume can be heard the roots of the love duet in Act 2, while Im Treibhaus (the last of the five to be composed) uses music later developed extensively for the Prelude to Act 3. The chromatic-harmonic style of Tristan pervades all five songs and pulls the cycle together.

Wagner initially wrote the songs for female voice and piano alone, but produced a fully orchestrated version of Träume, to be performed bychamber orchestra under Mathilde’s window on the occasion of her birthday, 23 December 1857. The cycle as a whole was first performed in public near Mainz on 30 July 1862 under the title Five Songs for a Female VoiceTräume is sometimes sung by a male voice, as for instance in a pre-War HMV recording by the Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior.

The orchestration of the whole cycle was completed for large orchestra by Felix Mottl, the Wagner conductor
. In 1976, the German composer Hans Werner Henze produced a chamber version for the whole cycle. Each of the players has a separate part, with some very striking wind registration.

The songs:

Der Engel (The Angel), composed November 1857

Stehe still! (Stand still!), composed February 1858

Im Treibhaus – Studie zu Tristan und Isolde (In the Greenhouse), composed May 1858

Schmerzen (Sorrows), composed December 1857

Träume – Studie zu Tristan und Isolde (Dreams), composed December 1857



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