3sat Television Online – Salzburg's Seasons and Mastersingers

Dorothea Röschmann and Michael Schade 

I was watching Haydn's The Seasons from Salzburg again. It is an über-Austrian wonder of music making, with Nickolaus Harnoncourt, Dorothea Röschmann, Michael Schade, and Florian Boesch fronting the Viennese chorus and Philharmonic. Papa Haydn would be proud! The oratorio is a hymn of praise to God and nature. The libretto is kind of hokey—maybe naïve would be a nicer way to say it—but the three soloists give it their all.

Unfortunately, the 3sat Television feed kept freezing. The good thing is the screen-cap above. When the feed froze on this image, I just knew I had to share it—two singers who love what they’re doing, and seem to love singing together. Here is the link to the Seasons feed.

Wagner: Wesendonck for Wednesday – More Nina Stemme

Last month, I posted Nina Stemme singing the Wesendonck Lieder in their original guise, with piano, from (I believe) a studio recording. Here is a live performance from the 2012 Salzburg Festival. Mariss Jansons conducts the Vienna Philharmonic (sounding lush as always, even in their reduced chamber configuration.) Is Nina's voice getting darker and richer? She sounds almost contralto-ish to me.  (Upon re-listening, I think it just takes her the first song to warm up.)

Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder, op. 91 

Nina Stemme, Wiener Philharmoniker, Mariss Jansons

Věc Makropulos – Salzburg 2011 (Part 3: Give Me Alchemy or Give Me Death)

In the course of Věc Makropulos, we learn that Emilia is in fact rather bored with living so long, constantly reinventing herself, and finding a new life and lover. She sings in her final aria that the relative brevity of life is what gives human existence its joys and meaning. Never-ending life seems to blur and ultimately render meaningless the differences between good and evil, happiness and sadness, and even life and death.