CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Anna Lucia Richter
Michael Gees
Part of Salon Encores.
Performers
Anna Lucia Richter, Soprano
Michael Gees, Piano
Program
BRITTEN "The trees they grow so high"
BRITTEN "The Ash Grove"
BRITTEN "How sweet the answer"
BRITTEN "Last Rose of Summer"
BRITTEN "The Salley Gardens"
BRITTEN "I wonder as I wander"
SCHUMANN Liederkreis, Op. 39
Extempore on poems: Texts by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
·· Wünschelrute (Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen)
·· Der alte Garten
·· In der Nacht
·· Burgmusik
·· Zauberblick
·· Nachtwanderer
·· Wünschelrute
BRAHMS from Deutsche Volkslieder
·· "In stiller Nacht, zur ersten Wacht" No. 42
·· "Da unten im Tale," No. 6
·· "Ich weiss mir'n Maidlein hübsch und fein," No. 40
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.This concert is made possible by The Ruth Morse Fund for Vocal Excellence.
At a Glance
From the start of his compositional life, Brahms believed that the best model for song composition was folk song. We hear three: a lament in which the singer and the piano are out of step with one another, telling us that the world is out of joint; an abandoned woman thanking the lover who rejected her for the love they once had and wishing him well (the grace is poignant); and a semi-comic warning against the beauty and wiles of women.
Soprano Anna Lucia Richter and pianist Michael Gees together extemporize a series of five songs on poems by Eichendorff. They are framed on either side by versions of Eichendorff’s poetic credo—that Romantic poetry has the power to animate the universe—that a song sleeps in everything and will awake when the poet strikes the right note.
Continuing the theme of folk song and its intermingling with art song, we hear six English, Irish, and American songs arranged by 20th-century composer Benjamin Britten, who—like Brahms—keeps the original melodies but writes an accompaniment in his own manner. The merger of antique and new is arresting.
Bios
Anna Lucia Richter
Anna Lucia Richter hails from a family of professional musicians. Since age nine, she
received singing lessons from her mother, Regina Dohmen, and was a member of the Girls
Choir of the Cologne Cathedral. From 2004 to 2008, she received regular lessons with Kurt
Widmer in Basel. Following her early studies with Klesie Kelly-Moog at the Hochschule für
Musik und Tanz in Cologne, she finished her advanced studies with first-class honors in the
summer of 2013. Ms. Richter won prizes at the National Song Contest in Berlin, the Luitpold
Prize at the Kissinger Sommer festival in 2011, and the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize
in 2011. In 2012, she won the International Robert Schumann Contest in Zwickau, and in
2014, she received the promotional prize for young artists of North
Rhine-Westphalia.
Ms. Richter has appeared with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony
Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra,
WDR Radio Orchestra, and Freiburger Barockorchester under notable conductors such as Markus
Stenz, Paavo Järvi, Kristjan Järvi, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Jonathan Cohen, Sir Roger
Norrington, and Iván Fischer. On the opera stage, she has performed in Hänsel und
Gretel, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Monteverdi's
L'Orfeo, among others. In the spring of 2017, she will sing in Henze's Elegie
für junge Liebende at the Theater an der Wien.
Ms. Richter is a particularly enthusiastic lieder singer. She has built an extensive
repertoire and has given guest performances at notable venues and festivals, including the
Lucerne Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Heidelberg Spring, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival,
Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, and London's Wigmore Hall. She made her debut in the US with
three recitals in New York's Park Avenue Armory, accompanied by Gerold Huber. Other piano
partners include Michael Gees and Nicholas Rimmer, and she regularly performs with Sir
András Schiff at his festival in Vicenza. Besides standard repertoire, Ms. Richter enjoys
improvisation as well as contemporary music compositions, and has given world premieres of
both Moritz Eggert's work Singet leise and Wolfgang Rihm's cycle Ophelia
Sings, which was especially composed for her.
Michael Gees
Michael Gees had an exceptional childhood; few others are able to claim to have a career
already behind them by age 15. He was born in 1953 into a world of sound and music, as both
of his parents were singers, and at age three, the piano was his favorite toy. He began
formal piano lessons at five, went on to win the Steinway Competition at eight, and
subsequently received a scholarship to the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The child prodigy further
studied at conservatories in Vienna and Detmold, fast on his way to becoming an
internationally acclaimed pianist.
Mr. Gees longed to explore the world of sound on his own terms-to experience the great
masters' music in a carefree way instead of limiting himself to a technical practice
regimen. He decided to flee the pressure of a predetermined competitive career at age 15,
leaving behind his conservatory studies and supporting himself by working as an
archeological assistant, while also becoming a sailor.
Chance led Mr. Gees back to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, where he
resumed his compositional studies and eventually graduated. There, he also developed his
technique on the piano and gained international renown as a lieder accompanist with
Christoph Prégardien. Throughout his studies, he nurtured his preference for combining the
music of past masters with the inspiration of current compositions, thereby creating
innovative performances.
In 1989, Mr. Gees founded the Forum Kunstvereint and later the Consol Theater, which
opened its doors in 2001, providing a place where children, youths, and adults alike are
encouraged to realize their own artistic potential. Since 2008, Mr. Gees has recorded with
the Netherlands label Challenge Classics. The 2009 release of Die Schöne
Müllerin with Mr. Prégardien won the Midem Classical Award and became Recording
of the Year. He has also given numerous solo recitals, where he enjoys breaking tradition
with modernized lieder renditions, melodramas, and stage music. Since 2009, Mr. Gees has
taught vocal improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne.