Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Quatre Chansons Françaises, Suite from Gloriana Christina Landshamer, Mark Padmore, Sinfonieorchester Basel & Ivor Bolton

• Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 - 1973), Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976): Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8:
• 1 Auden, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8: I. Prologue 02:18
• 2 Auden, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8: II. Rats Away! 04:29
• 3 Auden, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8: III. Messalina 07:51
• 4 Auden, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8: IV. Dance of Death 06:35
• 5 Auden, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8: V. Epilogue and Funeral March 07:29
• Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Benjamin Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises:
• 6 Hugo, Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises: I. Nuit de Juin 02:48
• Paul Verlaine (1844 - 1896), Benjamin Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises:
• 7 Verlaine, Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises: II. Sagesse 03:02
• Victor Hugo, Benjamin Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises:
• 8 Hugo, Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises: III. L'Enface 04:50
• Paul Verlaine, Benjamin Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises:
• 9 Verlaine, Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises: IV. Chanson D'Automne 02:29
• Benjamin Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a:
• 10 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: I. The Tournament 05:00
• William Plomer (1903 - 1973), Benjamin Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a:
• 11 Plomer, Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: II. The Lute Song 04:55
• Benjamin Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a:
• 12 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: III. The Courtly Dances - March 00:54
• 13 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: IV. The Courtly Dances - Coranto 01:21
• 14 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: V. The Courtly Dances - Pavane 02:47
• 15 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: VI. The Courtly Dances - Morris Dance 01:09
• 16 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: VII. The Courtly Dances - Galliard 01:49
• 17 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: VIII. The Courtly Dances - Lavolta 02:24
• 18 Britten: Gloriana. Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a: IX. Gloriana Moritura 07:27
• Total Runtime 01:09:37

Info for Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Quatre Chansons Françaises, Suite from Gloriana

Ivor Bolton has been principal conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since the beginning of the 2016/17 season and has always had a special affinity with British music. The present recording of rather unknown music by Benjamin Britten was therefore a very special concern for him from the very beginning. The programme consists of the early cycle Our Hunting Fathers (with the tenor Mark Padmore), the Quatre Chansons francaises (a stroke of genius by the only 14-year-old) and the suite from the unfortunately rarely performed opera Gloriana, which was incidentally written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

"69 years after the premiere of Benjamin Britten's coronation opera, the recording of the "Gloriana" suite becomes a nostalgic necrology for Queen Elizabeth II. In its movements, Britten linked Old English colouring with emotional turning points in the life of the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I. Despite this unintended funeral offering, the two cycles with the grippingly condensed orchestral songs are by far the weightier part of the album. Cynicism sounds biting and beautiful in Mark Padmore's Mourning Ode of Messalina to her Dead Dog. Christina Landshamer, too, has intimate lyricism with fitting vocal delicacy for the references to Impressionism and late Romanticism in Britten's youthful work. And Ivor Bolton, with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, masters the craggy eruptions, the pointedly fragmentary and the great empathetic melodicism. A must for the expressive songs." (concerti)

Christina Landshamer, soprano
Mark Padmore, tenor
Alasdair Kent, tenor
Basel Symphony Orchestra
Ivor Bolton, conductor

Christina Landshamer
Born in Munich, Christina Landshamer studied at the city’s Academy of Music and Drama under Angelica Vogel, and subsequently in Konrad Richter’s recital class and Dunja Vejzović’s soloist class at the State Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart. She is now a versatile and internationally highly sought-after concert, opera and recital singer. Her work with conductors such as Daniel Harding, Alan Gilbert, Sir Roger Norrington, Marek Janowski, Christian Thielemann and Riccardo Chailly has taken her to Europe’s most distinguished orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, the Munich and Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, and the Swedish Radio Orchestra Stockholm. In the USA and Canada she has performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Philharmonic and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

In the 2019/20 season Christina Landshamer is a soloist in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) with the Munich Philharmonic under Thomas Hengelbrock and with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, in Mozart’s Mass in C minor with the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra both under Herbert Blomstedt, as well as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Orchestre National de France under Emmanuel Krivine and the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Riccardo Chailly. Furthermore she sings in Bach’s St. John Passion with the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam under Trevor Pinnock and in Bach’s Mass in B minor with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester conducted by Andris Nelsons. She can be heard with the European Union Youth Orchestra in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony conducted by Ivàn Fischer in Italy, Vienna and Grafenegg, as well as in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi.

Early in her career Christina Landshamer had opera engagements at the Stuttgart State Opera, at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg, and at the Komische Oper in Berlin. She sang under Nikolaus Harnoncourt at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, and at the Salzburg Festival with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. This was followed by engagements for instance as Pamina in Simon McBurney’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at Amsterdam Opera, as Ännchen in the new production of Weber’s Der Freischütz conducted by Christian Thielemann, as Almirena in Rinaldo in Glyndebourne and as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. At the Bavarian State Opera she sang Woglinde in Wagner’s Rheingold conducted by Kirill Petrenko in 2018, and in the same year Christina Landshamer was to be heard in Haydn’s Creation in a spectacular version staged by La Fura dels Baus in Paris and in New York.

Moreover her warm, lyrical voice makes the soprano an ideal recital singer. With her piano accompanist Gerold Huber her first recital CD uniquely combines songs by Robert Schumann and Viktor Ullmann (Oehms Classics). The duo was already to be heard at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg and at London’s Wigmore Hall. She made her American debut as a lied singer with the Ensemble Midtvest in the Weill Recital Hall of the Carnegie Hall. This season, again together with Gerold Huber, she performs her programme Wider than the Sky in the Kioi Hall Tokyo for the first time; she has also been invited by Thomas Hampson to perform a Schubert programme in the Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin.

Christina Landshamer’s artistic activity as a concert and opera singer is documented on many recordings, including, among others, on CD Mozart’s Mass in C minor with the Bavarian Radio Chorus conducted by Howard Arman (BR-KLASSIK), Haydn’s oratorios The Seasons and The Creation under Philippe Herreweghe (PHI), Bizet’s Carmen under Simon Rattle (EMI), and on DVD Haydn’s Il mondo della luna with the Concentus musicus under Nikolaus Harnoncourt (UNITEL), Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly (DECCA/ACCENTUS), in Bach’s Mass in B minor under Herbert Blomstedt (ACCENTUS) and in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Nederlandse Opera (OPUS ARTE).

Mark Padmore
A highlight of Mark’s 2021/22 season was a residency at Wigmore Hall where he celebrated his relationship with pianists Till Fellner, Imogen Cooper, Mitsuko Uchida and Paul Lewis. He will return to the Wigmore Hall in the 2022/23 season to sing Vaughan Williams and Fauré with the Elias Quartet and James Baillieu, after performing the programme in Spain.

In addition to recitals with Kristian Bezuidenhout in Helsinki, Till Fellner in Zaragoza and Julius Drake in Amsterdam, Mark will be artist in residence at the Oxford Lieder Festival and will give a recital tour of Japan with Mitsuko Uchida.

He will also appear on stage in the title role of a new production of Monteverdi Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria conducted by Fabio Biondi, sing the world première of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s song cycle A constant obsession with the Nash Ensemble and give concerts with Sinfonieorchester Basel and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Mark’s most recent appearance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden was a new production of Britten’s Death in Venice, where his performance was described as a “tour de force” and “exquisite of voice, [presenting] Aschenbach’s physical and spiritual breakdown with extraordinary detail and insight”. Other opera roles have included the leading roles in Harrison Birtwistle The Corridor and The Cure at the Aldeburgh Festival; Captain Vere in Britten Billy Budd and Evangelist in a staging of St Matthew Passion both for the Glyndebourne Festival and the world première of Tansy Davies’ Cave with the London Sinfonietta.

In concert Mark performs with the world’s leading orchestras. He was Artist in Residence for the 2017/18 season with the Berlin Philharmonic and held a similar position with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2016/17. His work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has involved projects exploring both Bach St John and St Matthew Passion and has attracted worldwide acclaim.

His extensive discography includes Beethoven Missa Solemnis and Haydn Die Schöpfung with Bernard Haitink and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on BR Klassik and Lieder by Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart with Kristian Bezuidenhout for Harmonia Mundi. Other Harmonia Mundi recordings include Schubert cycles with Paul Lewis (Winterreise won the 2010 Gramophone magazine Vocal Award); Schumann Dichterliebe with Kristian Bezuidenhout (2011 Edison Klassiek Award) and Britten Serenade, Nocturne and Finzi Dies Natalis with the Britten Sinfonia (ECHO/Klassik 2013 award).

Mark was voted 2016 Vocalist of the Year by Musical America and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Kent University in 2014. He was appointed CBE in the 2019 Queens’ Birthday Honours List.

Mark is Artistic Director of the St. Endellion Summer Music Festival in Cornwall.

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