Audio

Jeffrey Ching
Taqtaq
Flute and Piano

Jeffrey Ching - Taqtaq - Flutes and piano

Commissioned and performed by Kirsten Spratt and Elizabeth Mucha. Live recording from the premiere in Berlin, 19th June, 2000

Taqtaq (con commenti critici) for flutes, piano and pre-recorded suling track by Jeffrey Ching

This is an excerpt from Taqtaq (con commenti critici) as I have not included the 2 ½ minute improvisation on the suling (the bamboo flute of the Tausug people of the southern Philippines) nor the much more ambitious coda which has the flute and piano playing alongside the track of the absent folk musician in a sort of surreal trio. Sadly this coda was never performed by us as it was not complete at the time of this performance.

Here are a few words from the composer, Jeffrey Ching:

There are rhapsodic and cadenza-like passages, but also fugal and canonic sections in strict counterpoint, reflecting the Spanish Baroque and Enlightenment influences on Philippine intellectual culture. The centrepiece is a twelve-tone parody of the sentimental Philippines love-song (kundiman) style at its most effusive.

John McLeod
Song from “Peacocks with a Hundred Eyes”
Mezzo-Soprano and Piano

John McLeod - Song from “Peacocks with a Hundred Eyes” Mezzo-Soprano and piano

Music by John Mcleod

Poems by Shelley and Christina Rossetti

Catherine King – Mezzo-Soprano

Elizabeth Mucha – Piano

Live recording from the European Festival of Lieder

Warsaw, Poland

June 13, 2009

John B. McEwan
The Wood’s Aglow from “Three Song”
Baritone and Piano

John B. McEwan - The Wood’s Aglow from “Three Song” Baritone and piano

from “Three Songs”

By John B. McEwen (1868 – 1948)

Stuart McIntyre - Baritone

Elizabeth Mucha – Piano

Studio recording - 1995

Felix Mendelssohn
3rd Movement from Sonata in F Major (1838)
Violin and Piano

Felix Mendelssohn - 3rd Movement from Sonata in F Major (1838) Violin and piano

Krassimira Jeliazkova – violin
Elizabeth Mucha- Piano
Recorded June 2014, Berlin

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.

Alexander Zemlinsky
Sonntag, Op7, No 5
Soprano and Piano

Alexander Zemlinsky – Sonntag, Op7, No 5 - Soprano and piano

Soprano - Alexandra Weaver

Piano - Elizabeth Mucha

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

Franz Liszt
Rigoletto Paraphrase
Piano Solo

Franz Liszt – Rigoletto Paraphrase - Piano solo

Piano – Elizabeth Mucha

Recorded 9th December, 2014 at  Woodhouse Opera,

 Holmsbury St Mary, Surrey