Hilary Hahn / Matthias Goerne / Christine Schäfer BACH Violin and Voice

This album has been years in the making. I first played some of these works more than a decade ago, and ever since then I have worked toward assembling an integral project of this repertoire.

My first exposure to Bach for violin and voice came when I was four, just a couple of months after I began to play violin. My father sang in a local choir in those days, and my mother and I went to see his group perform. In the middle of a cantata by Bach, a member of the choir suddenly stepped forward with a violin and played a duet with the soprano. I was mesmerized. The way the instrument's sound wove in and out of the vocal line - sometimes plaintive, sometimes playful, always supple and alive - seemed magical beyond belief.

The amazement broadened to appreciation as I grew older. Encouraged by my childhood teacher, Klara Berkovich, to find models of expression that appealed to me outside of violin, I absorbed much from the recordings of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Pears, Rosa Ponselle and Fritz Wunderlich that played in our house; and every holiday season, as we prepared dinners and exchanged gifts, the Messiah, B-minor Mass and St Matthew Passion sang out from the stereo. There was also a chamber music component. When I was ten, I began to study with Jascha Brodsky, then in his 80s and no longer performing. A friend of his gave me an audiotape containing Dover Beach for voice and string quartet, recorded in the 1930s. There I heard Samuel Barber's elegant baritone paired with the exquisite violin playing of a youthful Mr. Brodsky, and again the entwining of voice and violin swept me away. For several years after that, at every music festival I attended, I asked if it would be possible to work Dover Beach into the program. And because I had such good experiences with the musicians I met on those occasions, I searched for further repertoire involving singers. 

That search brought me back to Bach. In my late teens, when I had a chance to play one of Bach's arias for violin and voice at the Marlboro Music Festival, I found the interplay of lines as thrilling as it had been when I was a child of four - with the added pleasure of being able to understand the words. And as I learned other arias of Bach, I grew increasingly attached to the repertoire, until finally I proposed the present recording.
 That this project has come to fulfillment - and with such superb colleagues - is for me a dream come true. These magnificent pieces go to the heart of Bach's artistry as a composer of polyphony: multiple voices, at once clean and complex, presenting layer beneath layer for discovery. No matter how many times I play this music, I am always surprised to find in it new intricacies, new touches of beauty. I hope the same proves true for all who hear this album. (Hilary Hahn 10/2009)

Christine Schäfer / Ensemble Intercontemporain BOULEZ Pli Selon Pli

This recording of Pli selon Pli may be considered definitive. Pierre Boulez worked on this massive composition from 1957 to 1989, and over those years issued different versions and recordings of the work in progress. "Don" and "Improvisation sur Mallarmé III" have been extensively rewritten and are heard here in their final form. Compared to a more concentrated work, such as Le marteau sans maitre, Pli selon Pli is airy and open, more expansive in its pointillism, and more accommodating to silences. Boulez has simplified many of his procedures and has given the intricacies of his gestures and textures ample time for the listener's comprehension and appreciation. Soprano Christine Schäfer's expertise with avant-garde vocal techniques holds her in good stead. Her performance -- at times the center of attention, at others an embellishment on the instrumental proceedings -- is flexible and well-suited to the music's changing demands. The Ensemble InterContemporain, under the composer's direction, runs the gamut of Boulez's expression. Whether playing delicate figurations in stark isolation or executing complex chains of shifting colors, the orchestra is tight. The recording is remarkable for covering the full audio range, from softly plucked guitar notes to the shocking sforzando chords that open and close the work.