08.10.2021

GEORG NIGL - Annual Award of the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik for his album "Vanitas"

“After just the first phrase of Schubert’s "Im Freien", one is prostrate before this voice. Georg Nigl sings vermischte Träume, mixed dreams, in steel, velvet and silk,“ thus the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the new lied album by the Austrian baritone Georg Nigl.

After completing two previous recordings each for alpha-classics, baritone Georg Nigl and pianist Olga Pashchenko explore the intricate meanderings of the human soul in vocal works by Schubert (an ‘existentialist’ composer if ever there was one), Beethoven (whose suffering hardly needs pointing out) and the contemporary composer Wolfgang Rihm, whose highly existentialist Jakob Lenz was embodied on stage by Georg Nigl in 2019. Rihm’s piece Vermischter Traum, here in its premiere recording, was dedicated to the Austrian singer.

Anyone who has heard the baritone Georg Nigl once will not forget this voice. What makes this album so extraordinary is the intimacy which Georg Nigl and his piano accompanist Olga Pashchenko create, which immediately touches the listener’s heartstrings. This is what Schubert’s songs were written to do. This music does not belong on a huge stage, but was made for an intimate setting – both well-known songs as Die Forelle and rather unknown ones as Die Sommernacht. Schubert wrote them for his friends, and they were first sung among that circle of friends, during the so-called Schubertiaden.

VANITAS - BEETHOVEN, SCHUBERT & RIHM
Georg Nigl, baritone
Olga Pashchenko, piano
Label: Alpha | Nov 2020