Bach and Pygmalion: the story of a passion linking the genius of the Thomaskantor to a reflection on inner drama and constantly renewed vocality. This Matthäus Passion marks a major stage in this fifteen- year companionship and testifies to the culmination of their work on Bach, characterised by its precision and humility. Read through the prism of a tragedy in five acts, at once intimate and theatrical, human and metaphysical, the Passion is revealed here in a new light: as a deeply moving epic exploring the very heart of Lutheran spirituality.

Bass-baritone Christian Immler, accompanied by the pianist Andreas Frese, juxtaposes the contemporary composer Jörg Widmann with the Romantic Schumann in three cycles of lieder written between 1849 and 2013. ‘For us, Jörg Widmanns song cycle Das heiße Herz (‘The Burning Heart’) is to be numbered among the very greatest song cycles, and not just among those of this century. During our intensive rehearsals with Jörg Widmann, the many questions we had (and what a joy to be able to ask them!) often had surprisingly simple answers. The combination with Schumann’s late Harper and Lenau song cycles seems absolutely perfect, for similar situations permeate these cycles as well". Das heiße Herz is recorded here for the first time.

For its final concert of the 2021–22 season and Osmo Vänskä’s last as artistic director, the Minnesota Orchestra chose to present Mahler’s mammoth Eighth Symphony, which calls for one of the largest complement of performers in the history of music, a symbol of the communitarian spirit of collective cultural, social and religious-philosophical endeavour in what has been referred to as a ‘Mass for the Masses’.

Although highly productive and respected in his lifetime as a composer of Lieder, Robert Franz (1815–92) has since become a peripheral figure in music history. One reason may be that he avoids dramatic contrasts and instead aims at an emotional ambiguity: ‘My representation of joy is always tinged with melancholy, whilst that of suffering is always accompanied by an exquisite sensation of losing oneself’, he once wrote to Liszt. As a consequence his music appeals to those who are able ‘to admire the nuances of a charcoal drawing without longing for the colours of a painting’, to quote from Georges Starobinski’s liner notes to this recording. As they began to explore the songs of Franz, Starobinski and the baritone Christian Immler were moved by their findings to devise a programme which includes 23 of the composer’s often quite brief songs. Using the poet Heinrich Heine as their guiding star, they present these – all Heine settings but from different opus groups – in the form of two ‘imagined’ song cycles.