Befreit - A Soul Surrendered

Description

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately trained at Chetham's School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the International Opera School at the Royal College of Music. Having won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, she attended the prestigious Verbier Festival Academy. She writes about this project: "It has been a great pleasure for me to record again with Joseph. We have long shared a common passion for the romantic lieder of the early 20th century and have talked about making a disc including songs by Mahler and Strauss. The opportunity to discover and research lesser-known composers from their time has been exciting and fascinating. As the world endured the pandemic, we all experienced fear, danger, and loss in a way that most of our generation had never known before, on such a global scale. Joseph and I felt compelled to reflect on grief, mortality, and mourning. The two lesser-known composers featured in the recording are Johanna Müller-Hermann (who studied with several of the most prominent professors in Vienna - Josef Labor, Guido Adler, Alexander Zemlinsky, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Franz Schmidt) and Margarete Schweikert, whose education and life in Karlsruhe and studies with Joseph Haas in Stuttgart could hardly offer a greater contrast - clearly audible in their music.