Piotr Beczala, Lise Davidsen, Helen Donath, Gerald Finley, Soile Isokoski, Jonas Kaufmann, Peter Mattei and Nina Stemme perform concert works by Saariaho, Schoeck, Schreker, Sibelius, Stenhammar, and Strauss!

As I was gathering together some unusually interesting solo vocal works featuring several of opera’s greatest singers from the present and recent past, I was struck that a number were by S-composers. It then became a quest to discover more until I assembled this stellar octet of fascinating, rarely heard German and Scandinavian pieces, all but one accompanied by orchestra.

Schoeck: Besuch in Urach
Amanduskirche, Bad Urach
24 September 2004
Broadcast

Jonas Kaufmann

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR
Conductor — Stefan Solyom

Strauss: Four Songs, Op. 27
Royal Albert Hall
10 August 2019
Broadcast

Lise Davidsen

Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Saariaho: True Fire
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
15 June 2017
Broadcast

Gerald Finley

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Conductor — Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Sibelius: Five Songs
Monte Carlo
28 March 2015
Broadcast

Soile Isokoski

BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Conductor — Sakari Oramo

Strauss: Lieder
Berlin Philharmonie
1 December 2009
Broadcast

Piotr Beczala

Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Conductor — Bertrand de Billy

Schoenberg: Vier Lieder, Op. 2 – No. 1: Erwartung
David Geffen Hall
26 September 2019
Broadcast

Nina Stemme

Harp — Nancy Allen

Stenhammar: Florez och Blanzeflor
Berwaldhallen Stockholm
20 March 2020
Broadcast

Peter Mattei

Sveriges Radios symfoniorkester
Leader — Malin Broman

Schreker: Vom ewigen Leben

Venue and Orchestra ?
1965
Broadcast

Helen Donath

Conductor — Hermann Scherchen

Each of today’s eight selections can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a square with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

On past Trove Thursdays, you can hear Kaufmann in Mahler, as Idomeneno or his only performance as Max in Der Freischütz.

Experience Davidsen in Wagner’s early Das Liebesverbot and Sibelius’s Luonnotar, and Finley in orchestrated Schubert lieder. He and Mattei play dueling Requiems (Duruflé versus Fauré) while the Swede transforms himself into an unusually elegant doomed sailor as Britten’s Billy Budd.

In addition, nearly 300 other podcast tracks are always available from Apple Podcasts and iTunes for free, or via any RSS reader.

The archive listing every “Trove Thursday” offering since September 2015 in alphabetical order by composer was updated recently.