Elisabeth Kulman - mezzo-soprano
Eduard Kutrowatz – piano
frauen . leben . liebe
Robert Schumann:
Frauenliebe und -leben, op. 42
Abschied, Waldszenen, op. 82/9
Sieben Lieder von Elisabeth Kulman, op. 104
Warum? Fantasiestücke, op. 12/3
Richard Wagner:
Wesendonck-Lieder, wwv 91
This CD explores women’s feelings of love, taking three very different women as its examples. In the first cycle of lieder by Robert Schumann, the poet Chamisso describes what makes a woman’s love tick, how she revolves around a man, a child, a mother, how she struggles with the death of the man she loves. In the second cycle we hear the movingly mature love of the young girl Elisaveta Borisovna Kulman, who at an early age looks death straight in the face, and in do-ing so is more concerned with comforting her beloved mother than in pitying herself. In Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, which are settings of poems by his admiring muse, Mathilde Wesendonck, we find the tension of a love affair that is not physically consummated but rather inspires the creativity of both authors through the back and forth of closeness and distance.
Released 2014.