Art Sung Media

Art Sung - Alma Mahler at Wilton's Music Hall

Art Sung Film

 

Alma Mahler
Der Erkennende
Soprano and Piano

Alma Mahler – Der Erkennende Soprano and piano

Carl Moll – At the Sideboard

Soprano – Alexandra Weaver

Piano – Elizabeth Mucha

Excerpt from the programme notes

Der Erkennende (The Recognizer) was a poem written by Franz Werfel, Alma Mahler’s third husband, which she set to music in 1915, two years before they met.
The opening of the song in the dark key of D minor draws us into a pessimistic world where, even though we are surrounded by people who love us, ‘we sit hunched around the table cloth, and are cold and can say no to them’. The middle section moves into the major bringing with it the hope of redemption, yet the most poignant words follow: ‘what loves us, we push away and us, cold ones, no sorrow can melt us. What we love is taken from us, it becomes hard and can no longer be attained.’ The song ends dramatically with the words ‘One thing I know: nothing will ever be mine. My only possession is to recognize.’ 

Carl Moll (1861-1945) was Alma Schindler’s stepfather and one of the co-founders of the Vienna Secession. The relationship between Carl and Alma was not a happy one as she considered that he had usurped the place of her father, the well-known painter Emil Schindler who died in 1892.
His painting, ‘At the Sideboard’ seems to capture a sense of ‘aloneness’ in amidst a beautiful and serene domestic setting. 

Recorded 20th November, 2014, Woodhouse Opera, Holmsbury St Mary, Surrey.

Alexander Zemlinsky
Irmelin Rose
Soprano and Piano

Alexander Zemlinsky – Irmelin Rose - Soprano and piano

Fernand Khnopff – “Who shall deliver me?”

Soprano – Alexandra Weaver

Piano – Elizabeth Mucha

Excerpt from the programme notes.

Alma first met the Belgian Symbolist painter, Fernand Khnopff, when he exhibited his painting at the 1st Secession exhibition in 1898. Her initial assessment of him was that “he’s a very refined, aristocratic person and an artist of immense stature”. Over the next few years, Khnopff became a regular visitor at the Schindler household. On 10th March 1900, an interesting conversation took place between them at a party. Alma recorded it thus in her diary:

I told him that that for me he was a secret walking the face of the Earth –
Le secret qui va sur terre.
He asked me why I felt that, and I told him that his eyes and his mouth were sealed – that they spoke, but said nothing. An impenetrable wall of iron sealed off his soul from the outside world. He agreed…

Recorded 20th November, 2014, Woodhouse Opera, Holmsbury St Mary, Surrey.