Verboten und verbannt (Forbidden and Banned) is the title of Orfeo D'Or's CD of a live Salzburg Festival performance by Thomas Hampson given on August 18, 2005. The program is a very intelligently conceived survey of lieder by composers whose works were suppressed during the Nazi period, all Jewish, and all either German or Austrian. The program begins in the nineteenth century with composers banned by the Nazis in hindsight. One wonders why one would seek to place a ban on these playfully innocent Mendelssohn lieder or ...
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Verboten und verbannt (Forbidden and Banned) is the title of Orfeo D'Or's CD of a live Salzburg Festival performance by Thomas Hampson given on August 18, 2005. The program is a very intelligently conceived survey of lieder by composers whose works were suppressed during the Nazi period, all Jewish, and all either German or Austrian. The program begins in the nineteenth century with composers banned by the Nazis in hindsight. One wonders why one would seek to place a ban on these playfully innocent Mendelssohn lieder or Giacomo Meyerbeer's frothy concoctions, which seem more suitable for the cabaret than any political forum anyone can imagine.The balance of the program is made up of composers for whom the Nazis pogrom against musicians was more up close and personal. Perhaps the most extraordinary group of songs in the recital are those by Alexander Zemlinsky, moving, beautifully crafted lied that demonstrate excellently well the exploratory strain in Zemlinsky's music. So much emphasis has been placed...
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