Heinz Holliger (1939-)
Six lieder d'après Christian Morgenstern

Salvatore Sciarrino (1947-)
Deux mélodies

Helmut Lachenmann (1935-)
Got Lost

György Kurtág (1926-)
Requiem po drugu, op. 26

Wolfgang Rihm (1952-)
Ophelia Sings

Bernhard Lang (1957-)
Wenn die Landschaft aufhört

Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
Jan-Philipp Schulze, piano

Avec l’insouciante ambition de ceux qui vont s’emparer du monde, Sarah Maria Sun (soprano) et Jan Philip Schulze (piano) livrent dans ce disque leur vision du meilleur de l’œuvre contemporaine consacrée au lied. Heinz Holliger, dont le talent d’hautboïste n’aurait peut-être jamais vu le jour si sa voix de soprano n’avait mué aussi radicalement, ouvre le feu avec ses six lieder d'après Christian Morgenstern, composés à 17 ans. Subtile, estompée, l’écriture de Salvatore Sciarrino joue sur la gracile différence de titre relevée dans les deux versions du poème de Gianbattista Marino (Occhi stillanti, Occhi stellanti) et livre un magnétique Due Melodie. Aux prises avec l’inconsistance théorique de la voix chantée dans son approche structurelle, Helmut Lachenmann oppose des textes incompatibles : celui, phonétique et explosif, de Friedrich Nietzsche voit sa substance héroïque malmenée par celui, mélodieux et quasi dansant, de Fernando Passoa - lui-même annihilé par le dernier texte, d’un anonyme à la recherche son panier à linge. Citons enfin l’œuvre récente de Bernhard Lang (Wenn die Landschaft aufhört), caractérisée comme souvent chez l’expérimentaliste autrichien par la répétition douloureuse et fulgurante de courtes phrases, qui conclut un CD riche en premiers enregistrements. (Bernard Vincken)

The idea for a recital of “Modern Lied” came about over breakfast following the first concert Sun and Schulze performed together. Realizing that they enjoy the same things, Schulze said: “Our next program should be harder. It should be the hardest program ever. We should put some of the greatest contemporary masterpieces of Lied in one program. It should be just insanely beautiful and hard and most of all insanely good. No old stuff included.” This recital is the result of that idea. The earliest work is Holliger’s beautiful cycle on Morgenstern texts. It forms a bridge from traditional lieder to the modern. The Morgenstern Lieder have a completely different sense of harmony, very soft, somewhere between Debussy, Berg and Ravel. Sciarrino’s "Due Melodie" are a virtuoso piece for piano with vocal accompaniment. As Salvatore is a collector of autographs and first-editions, he found the poem by Gianbattista Marino in two different versions by chance: in one it was called Occhi stellanti (starry eyes), in the other Occhi stillanti (sparkling eyes). This subtle difference moved him to create two different settings of the poem. Lachenmann’s "Got Lost" includes the sonic effects of signing into the piano, the use of percussive sounds made by the mouth (and piano), among others. His goal was to make a lied which avoids outright expression. To achieve this he weaves texts of Nietzsche (expressed almost without exception only with shouts), Fernando Pessoa (whose text is diametrically opposed to Nietzsche), and from an elevator sign he noticed about someone’s laundry basket which had “got lost.” Kurtág and Rihm: both have written Lieder for decades and have short, dark song cycles which the artists wanted to have on this CD. Ophelia sings comes from Shakespeare’s original stage direction, Rihm uses a freely rambling, sleepwalking tonal language with a finely weaved piano setting for Ophelia’s deluded singing in Hamlet. Kurtág’s chromatic four Songs of Loss are set to texts by Russian poet Rimma Dalos. They are extremely concise, with not one note too many. Bernhard Lang’s "When the Landscape Ceases" sets the stream of consciousness text by Dieter Sperl in a new kind of rap-singing, somewhere between the rhythm of speech and a pointillistic style of intonation. The liner notes by Sarah Maria Sun includes interviews with Holliger, Lachenmann and Lang specifically for this release