Angelika Kirchschlager - Joseph Marx: Selected Songs (2010)

Joseph Marx was a master of lyrical atmospheric music. He has often been compared to Hugo Wolf, who was twenty years his senior, because song was the foundation on which their respective creative oeuvres rested. Angelika Kirchschlager, one of today's most renowned lied singers, is absolutely captivated by the lyrical charm and the incredibly multifaceted expressive power of Marx's songs, selected a representative sampling together with her piano partner Anthony Spiri, and produced an exemplary recording for cpo. The songs from the Italienisches Liederbuch of 1912, for example, display all sorts of different moods (dramatic, delightful, gloomy, humorous), and one quickly understands why Marx's compositions were so popular during his lifetime: for every atmosphere or mood he perfected and uniquely shaped a musical whole.