Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
2020 | Alpha Classics
Anna Prohaska (soprano)
About
The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré’s ‘Paradis’, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell’s ‘Sleep, Adam, sleep’ with its references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms’s ‘Salamander’, Wolf’s ‘Die Bekehrte’ or Ravel’s ‘Air du Feu’. In ‘Das Paradies und die Peri’, Schumann conjures up the image of Syria’s rose-covered plains. Bernstein also transports us to the desert with ‘Silhouette’. John Milton’s seventeenth-century masterpiece ‘Paradise Lost’ was the inspiration for Charles Ives and Benjamin Britten, also featured in this very rich programme that constitutes an invitation for travel and reflection.
Track Listing
1. Ravel: Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis (No. 2 from Trois chansons, M.69) 2:39
2. Bernstein: Silhouette (Galilee) 1:54
3. Messiaen: Bonjour toi, colombe verte (No. 2 from Harawi) 3:44
4. Fauré: Paradis (No. 1 from La chanson d’Eve, Op. 95) 7:20
5. Debussy: Apparition (L. 53) 3:34
6. Daniel-Lesur: Ce qu’Adam dit à Ève (No. 1 from Clair comme le jour) 4:33
7. Stravinsky: Pastorale 1:33
Excerpt, Wolf, H: 4:41
8.Wolf: Die Spröde (No. 16 from Goethe-Lieder)1:51
9. Wolf: Die Bekehrte (No. 17 from Goethe-Lieder) 2:50
10. Brahms: Salamander, Op. 107 No. 2 0:51
11. Reimann, A: Gib mir den Apfel (No. 6 from Kinderlieder) 1:00
12. Britten: A Poison Tree (Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, Op. 74) 3:11
13. Pfitzner: Röschen biß den Apfel an (No. 6 from Alte Weisen Op. 33) 0:43
14. Ravel: Air du Feu: “Arrière…” from L’enfant et les sortilèges (M. 71) 1:50
15. Rachmaninov: ‘A-oo’, Op.38, No. 6 2:14
16. Ives: Evening (114 Songs, No. 2) 1:44
17. Purcell: Sleep, Adam, sleep, Z195 1:37
18. Schubert: Auflösung, D807 2:11
19. Schubert: Abendstern, D806 2:25
20. Schumann: Jetzt sank des Abends gold’ner Schein (No. 11 from Das Paradies und die Peri, Op. 50) 4:35
21. Schumann: Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann (No. 6 from Liederkreis Op. 24) 2:06
Eisler: 5 Elegies 2:29
22. Eisler: Jeden Morgen, mein Brot zu verdienen (No. 13 from Fünf Elegien) 1:10
23. Eisler: Diese Stadt hat mich belehrt (No. 14 from Fünf Elegien) 1:19
24. Mahler: Das irdische Leben (No. 5 from Des Knaben Wunderhorn) 2:45
25. Crumb: Wind Elegy (No. 3 from Three Early Songs) 2:52
26. Anon.: I will give my love an apple 1:19