From the Baroque

to the Modern Age

Johanna Pommranz - soprano

Nils Wanderer - Countertenor

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

Night, magic, nature and love are the main themes of this duo recital. Schumann, Wolf and Strauss masterfully interweave these elements but the program extends well beyond the Romantic era. The Shakespeare settings by Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten and Roger Quilter build a bridge between the English Baroque and the 20th century. The poetry of Walt Whitman as set to music in George Crumb’s cycle Apparition cycle is likewise of Shakespearean scope, confiming the author’s claim: I contain multitudes! Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World and St. Petersburg, an original composition by countertenor Nils Wanderer bring this evening to a very special close.

The Elf King and
the Distant Beloved

Johannes Held - baritone

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

We all know Franz Schubert's classic version of the Elf King. Baritone Johannes Held and pianist Doriana Tchakarova present a vast array of settings – before and after Schubert – of Goethes most famous poem. It’s an encounter with a whole crowd of Elf Kings riding towards us: from Reichardt, Beethoven and Carl Czerny, to Emilie Mathieu and Stefan Schulzki. Each version is different, each presenting its unique perspective in music. The second part of the recital provides relief after so much riding and mortal danger with the bright world of Beethoven's songs: An die Ferne Geliebte is the first song cycle in music history and proves that music can overcome any barriers. Really any.

If with such talent
I did not join the stage

(Christmas concert)

Eva Zalenga - Soprano

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

Soprano Eva Zalenga and pianist Doriana Tchakarova light a glittering musical Christmas tree.

The moon shines, mermaids and Greek demigods play in the night air and a number of capricious opera and operetta leading ladies also pay their respects. They have their specific Christmas wishes – jewels and elegant fashion, a varied love life, or the very special someone they haven't met yet. A musical Christmas tree, in all the bright colors of the life shines and its afterglow will linger in the audience’s ears for a long time.

Songs of Madness

from Robert Schumann to Wolfgang Rihm

Marcel Brunner - Baritone

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

"He didn't feel tired, but sometimes it was uncomfortable for him that he couldn't walk on his head." Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, the poet and protagonist of Georg Büchner's novella Lenz, sees the world differently than people around him : upside down. Madness, a state of hypersensitivity in which the perception of reality spirals out of control, has always been both a nightmare and a source of fascination. The motif of insanity runs like a red thread through literature, art and music, a constant reminder of the unconscious forces that profoundly influence our mind and actions.

Poets' loves and lives



Magnus Dietrich - Tenor

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

Love moves and transforms the world in a myriad of ways -  we long and suffer for it,  we are disappointed when it remains unrequited, and exalted when its beautiful sparks  enchant everything. Thus poets and composers have created an abundance of masterpieces celebrating love since time immemorial.

In Dichterliebe Schumann's art combined with Heine's kaleidoscopic poetry, ranging from profound intimacy to scathing irony, has produced a pinnacle among romantic song cycles. But the complex experience of love in continually prods poets and musicians to find ever new ways of grasping it in language and music.

This concert presents Schumann's Dichterliebe along rarities by Liszt, Schoeck, Elgar, Quilter, Cornelius, Rubinstein and von Fallersleben - and thus conveys the experience of love's abundance as well as the manifold ways how poets and composers find the words and melodies that go straight to the heart.

The Fair Magelone

Thilo Dahlmann - Bass-baritone

Hans-Peter Schatz - Recitation

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

From the Arabian Nights through Provençal chivalric romance to Tieck's romantic poetry, the adventure tale of a knight who flees Naples with his beloved has kindled the imagination of many poets. A thieving raven leads the knight on an odyssey, he is taken prisoner by the sultan, whose daughter wants to marry him – he escapes alone in a rowing boat and, exhausted from the search for his Magelone, ends up with a shepherdess who nurses him back to health and turns out to be none other than his very beloved. It also took Brahms a long time - six years – to complete his cycle on Tieck's poems. It turned out to be an innovative combination of romances and interludes from Tieck's prose. And thus an ideal combination for a singer of Thilo Dahlmann’s narrative talent and an actor with an ear for music like Hans-Peter Schatz, the Grimme Prize winner and star of many famous German TV series (Der Fahnder, Heimat) – which, not unlike Brahms' Tieck settings, draw a large audience.

Winterreise

Freya Apffelstaedt - Mezzosoprano

Doriana Tchakarova - Piano

Ever since Lotte Lehmann, Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and Christine Schäfer, female singers have had an important say about Winterreise. Freya Apffelstaedt conquers Schubert's darkest cycle with the panache of a young voice and a young soul - the frost flowers aglow in winter, the wind whistling around the weathervane, three suns glistening in the cold sky. Her dialogue partner at the piano - Doriana Tchakarova: all the virtuosity, strength, poetic sensitivity and imagination for Schuberts bizarre sound world, she carries this journey of the soul from disappointed love into no man's land, where hope dies and a crow as messenger of death leading to the forlorn cemetery. Two powerful interpretive personalities present their very own take on Schubert's last word in song.