Brahms: Liebeslieder Latvian Radio Choir & Sigvards Klava

• Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): 3 Quartets, Op. 64:
• 1No. 1, An die Heimat04:43
• 2No. 2, Der Abend03:49
• 4 Quartets, Op. 92:
• 3No. 1, O schöne Nacht!02:59
• 4No. 2, Spätherbst01:28
• 5No. 3, Abendlied02:45
• 6No. 4, Warum?02:22
• 18 Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52:
• 7No. 1, Rede, Mädchen01:12
• 8No. 2, Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut00:43
• 9No. 3, O die Frauen01:20
• 10No. 4, Wie des Abends schöne Röte00:50
• 11No. 5, Die grüne Hopfenranke01:39
• 12No. 6, Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel02:20
• 13No. 8, Wenn so lind dein Auge01:40
• 14No. 9, Am Donaustrande01:27
• 15No. 10, O wie sanft die Quelle00:53
• 16No. 11, Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen00:58
• 17No. 13, Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft00:39
• 18No. 14, Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar01:39
• 19No. 15, Nachtigall, sie singt so schön00:58
• 20No. 16, Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe01:16
• 21No. 18, Es bebet das Gesträuche01:09
• 22No. 1, Verzicht, o Herz, auf Rettung00:47
• 15 Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 65:
• 23No. 2, Finstere Schatten der Nacht01:40
• 24No. 7, Vom Gebirge Well auf Well00:51
• 25No. 8, Weiche Gräser im Revier01:44
• 26No. 12, Schwarzer Wald, dein Schatten01:27
• 27No. 13, Nein, Geliebter, setze dich01:42
• 28No. 14, Flammenauge, dunkles Haar01:46
• 29No. 15, Zum Schluß "Nun, ihr Musen, genug"02:21
• Total Runtime49:07

Info for Brahms: Liebeslieder

Best known for his gigantic orchestral masterpieces Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) took equal pleasure in writing smaller miniatures. In fact, Brahms wrote a substantial number of pieces for vocal quartet and piano; this ensemble was for him a vehicle for expressing warmth and positive emotions, and as such this genre remains one of the most beloved in his output. This new recording by the prestigious Latvian Radio Choir under Sigvards Klava features a selection from his Opp. 52, 64, 65 and 92, including some of his famous Liebeslieder-Walzer.

Brahms wrote his earliest waltzes for piano duet and published them as op. 39 in 1865. Some years later, in 1868–1869, he went on to write the Liebeslieder-Walzer for vocal quartet and piano four hands op. 52. These, in turn, prompted a ‘sequel’ in Neue Liebeslieder op. 65 five years later. These warm and vivacious songs are a happy marriage of Viennese waltzes and the love poetry of Georg Friedrich Daumer, and biographers point to a romantic impulse stemming from Brahms’s amorous enchantment with the daughter of his close friend Clara Schumann, Julia. Brahms’s vocal quartets with piano accompaniment represent an interesting chamber-music approach to vocal music. They give the impression of being created for the purpose of intimate music-making at home, among friends. The Liebeslieder-Walzer quickly became one of Brahms’s most popular works.

Brahms’s op. 64, a set of three partsongs for quartet, was published in 1874. Op. 92 belongs essentially to Brahms’s late output. Its first partsong dates from 1877 and the other three from 1884. Despite the time gap, the partsongs in the set form a coherent and consistent whole. Three of the songs explore moods of evening and night, and the autumnal meditation of the second partsong fits in well.

Award-winning Latvian Radio Choir is among the most prestigious chamber choirs in Europe. The choir’s previous releases on Ondine have been highly successful. The recording of Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (ODE 1206-5) was chosen as the Record of the Month, Editor’s Choice and received a nomination in the Gramophone Awards in 2013. Similarly, their recent release of choral works by Valentin Silvestrov (ODE 1266-5) received Gramophone Editor’s Choice.

Aldis Liepiņš, piano
Dace Kļava, piano
Latvian Radio Choir
Sigvards Klava, conductor

Sigvards Kļava
began working with the Latvian Radio Choir in 1987 and was appointed its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director in 1992. As one of Latvia's most prolific choral conductors, Sigvards Kļava has collaborated with every leading choir and orchestra in the country, performing the great works of the standard repertoire in addition to conducting most premieres of new choral works by Latvian composers. He has recorded over 20 CDs with the Latvian Radio Choir. Sigvards Kļava has also been Chief Conductor at a number of Latvian and Nordic song festivals. He is a co-founder of the Latvian New Music Festival ARENA and serves as a member of its artistic board. He teaches young conductors at the Choral Department of the Latvian Academy of Music and the Choral College of the Riga Lutheran Cathedral. Sigvards Kļava appears as a guest conductor with leading European choirs. He has received the Latvian Great Music Award and the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Award.

Einojuhani Rautavaara
(born 9 October 1928) is internationally one of the best known and most frequently performed Finnish composers. He is by nature a romantic, even a mystic, as is often apparent from the titles of his works: for example Angels and Visitations for orchestra or his double-bass concerto Angel of Dusk. Despite Rautavaara's label of "mysticism" he is a complex and contradictory figure whose works cannot be categorized in stylistic terms.

At the age of seventeen Rautavaara began studying the piano and later went on to study musicology at Helsinki University and composition at the Sibelius Academy. From 1951-53 he was a pupil of Aarre Merikanto receiving his diploma in composition in 1957. In 1955 the Koussewitzky Foundation awarded Jean Sibelius a scholarship in honour of his 90th birthday to enable a young Finnish composer of his choice to study in the United States. Sibelius selected Rautavaara who spent two years studying with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and also took part in the summer courses at Tanglewood given by Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland. In 1957 Rautavaara continued his studies with Wladimir Vogel in Ascona, Switzerland and a year later with Rudolf Petzold in Cologne. Rautavaara has taught and lectured at the Sibelius Academy as the professor of composition. Since 1988 he has made his living as a composer in Helsinki.

Rautavaara's earliest works revealed close ties to tradition but also his desire to renew it. They were followed by an extreme constructivist and avant-garde phase (as in the serially organized fourth symphony "Arabescata", 1962) after which Rautavaara turned to hyper-romanticism and finally mysticism. Since the early 1980s, Rautavaara has adopted a sort of post-modern musical language in which modern and traditional elements of varying degrees of constructivism or freedom are combined with one another.

Rautavaara has composed eight symphonies, the most frequently performed of them being the Angel of Light, his seventh symphony. Symphony No. 8, The Journey was premiered in April 2000 by The Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch. Other important groups of works include concertos for different solo instruments, among them the three piano concertos, the popular Violin Concerto (1977), the Harp Concerto (2000) and the Clarinet Concerto (2001-02). Rautavaara has also written a large body of chamber music as well as choral and vocal works including All-Night Vigil for a cappella chorus. One of Rautavaara's most popular works is Cantus arcticus, concerto for birds and orchestra, in which the straightforward orchestral part is juxtaposed with the sounds of birds recorded by the composer himself. Rautavaara's latest orchestral works, published by Boosey & Hawkes, include and Manhattan Trilogy (2004), Book of Visions (2005), Before the Icons (2005) and A Tapestry of Life (2007).

Apart form his symphonies (ODE 1145-2Q) and concertos (ODE 1156-2Q), the central pillars of Rautavaara's extensive oeuvre are his operas. With Vincent (1985-87) and The House of the Sun (1990) Rautavaara has scored a notable international success. Aleksis Kivi (1995-96) was premiered at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1997 and it has been performed in Cosenza, Italy and Minneapolis, U.S.A since then. The latest stage work is Rasputin (2001-2003), an opera about the life of mystic and healer Grigory Rasputin.

Booklet for Brahms: Liebeslieder