Singing for me means being at peace with myself and the world.

CD Passions

For their first joints CD-production, titled “Passions”, mezzo-soprano Martina Gmeinder and pianist Anselm Hartmann have chosen rarely performed piano songs from the Fin de Siècle by Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) and the first half of the 20th. century by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), Samuel Barber (1910-1981) and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).

The title “Passions”, in English the same as in French, underlines the conjoining element of the chosen works and their composers.
On the one hand, there is an exceptional, even passionate relationship between the composers and their respective librettists, irrespective of how well they knew each other: Britten and Wystan Hugh Auden, Poulenc and Guillaume Apollinaire, Barber and Rainer Maria Rilke, Hahn and the French poetry of the 19th. century by Victor Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Theophile Gautier and, last but not least, Leconte de Lisle.
On the other hand, most texts are about love for a woman – paired with longing, hope, disappointment, relinquishment – as well as love for nature and life itself with all its pleasures, such as precious wines and fragrant herbs.

The CD costs 17 Euros and can be mail-ordered.