Günther Groissböck / Malcolm Martineau

• Opera

Günther Groissböck’s career has taken him to the world’s great opera houses, from Vienna through New York to Bayreuth. The Austrian bass is at the top of his game, but it’s not only with Wagner, Strauss et al. that he delights audiences with his jet-black voice. He also makes regular appearances as a sensitive and versatile lieder singer, and comes to Hamburg now with a particularly moving programme.

Contemporaries of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky must have felt that his music had been beamed down from a distant star. The »Songs and Dances of Death«, written in 1875, are bold and new, gripping music full of experiment, in which Mussorgsky has Death assume different roles and even appear in person.

Transience is also a central theme in the works of Gustav Mahler, who returned repeatedly to the collection of folk poems »Des Knaben Wunderhorn« for texts to base his songs on. His setting of »Urlicht« is particularly well-known: it later appeared in an orchestral version in Mahler’s Second Symphony, and achieved great popularity in that form.

PERFORMERS

Günther Groissböck bass

Malcolm Martineau piano

PROGRAM

Erste Hälfte tbc

Robert Schumann
Der Soldat »Es geht bei gedämpfter Trommel Klang«

Robert Schumann
Der Spielmann

Robert Schumann
Da liegt der Feinde gestreckte Schar

Robert Schumann
Die beiden Grenadiere »Nach Frankreich zogen zwei Grenadier’«

Johannes Brahms
Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121

Johannes Brahms
Dein blaues Auge

Johannes Brahms
Die Mainacht

Johannes Brahms
Unbewegte laue Luft

Johannes Brahms
Heimweh II

- Interval -

Modest Mussorgsky
Songs and Dances of Death

Gustav Mahler
Nicht wiedersehen

Gustav Mahler
Revelge

Gustav Mahler
Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz

Gustav Mahler
Der Tamboursg’sell

Gustav Mahler
Urlicht