BARBARA JERNEJČIČ FÜRST: DOTIKI

Classical and Modern Music

Format: CD

Code: 111891

EAN: 3838898111891

/Short Comment on the New Recording Dotiki/
The purpose of the umbrella project Slovenian Music in the International Context is to promote quality Slovenian musical works and place them in the international context. Their value is most evident when they could be heard in a quality performance along with similar works from the world literature. Barbara Jernejčič Fürst’s recording Dotiki (Touches) exceeds this scope as it is a carefully thought-out programmatic presentation of quiet female narration, whose characteristic, clear and very expressive voice has been shaped in the course of the centuries.
Mihael Paš, Editor of Chamber Music, Ars Programme

/Personal Approach/
Contemporary music – music of countless expressive possibilities, freedom, and an endless quest. Testing the limits of human voice, concentration, solfège skills, and daring. Complete exposure of feelings, fears, doubts, and a personal confession. The world of deepest experiences in life and states of a woman’s soul from different points of view, both male and female.
A journey through paths which are revealed anew with each song and are a part of our life – despair, anguish, indifference, yearning, admiration etc.
All this to be a challenge to the listener.
Barbara Jernejčič Fürst

Barbara Jernejčič Fürst, mezzo-soprano, graduated with honors in choral conducting and performing arts and gained master’s degree from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. She was a member of the Flemish Operastudio of the Belgian city of Ghent and received scholarship from the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, Chicago. Additionally, she has had master classes with M. Lipovšek, C. Ludwig, D. Fischer-Diskau, M. Martinu, R. Piernay, and, on baroque singing, with B.Schlick and C. Rousset.

Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has appeared on celebrated opera stages, including that of the Theater im Palais in Graz, the Flemish Opera in Ghent and Antwerp, the Vienna Chamber Opera, the Theater an der Wien, and Ljubljana’s and Maribor’s National Theaters, performing the roles of Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, the Second Lady in The Magic Flute and Dorabella in Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina, the Third Lady at the premiere of Mia Schmidt’s opera Fanny Goldmann, Lucretia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Siébel in Gounod’s Faust, Lisinga in Gluck’s Le cinesi, the Trommler in Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, and Arianna and Una Ingrata in Monteverdi’s Ballo.mortale.
As a concert vocalist, Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has appeared on the following occasions: the Ljubljana Musical Youth, the Ljubljana Festival, the Kogoj’s Days Festival, the Slovenian Music Days, the Radovljica Festival, as well as the Steiricher Herbst, the Zagreb Music Biennale, the Hamburg Klangwerktage, the Wien Modern, the Bregenzer Festspiele, the Styriarte, the International Weeks of Early Music in Krieglach, the Echi lontani, the Retz Festival, the Frühling Festival in the Musikverein. She has collaborated with numerous conductors, such as A. Nanut, U. Lajovic, M. Munih, D. de Villiers, G. Pehlivanian, S. Kuijken, M. Haselböck, P. Rossi, D. Masson, D. Runnicles, S. Camberlin, and J. Kalitzky, as well as several orchestras and ensembles, such as the Slovene Philharmonics, the Slovene Radio and Television Symphonic Orchestra, the Armonico Tributo Austria, La Petite Bande, Solamente naturali, Musica Aeterna, Slowind, Mosaik, the Tonkünstlerorchester, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In her rich concert career, she has performed some of the most important musical works: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Bach’s Magnificat, St Matthew Passion, St John Passion and a number of his cantatas, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Bruckner’s Te Deum, Donizetti’s Messa di Gloria e Credo, Durufle’s Requiem, Haydn’s masses, Honneger’s Le Roi David, Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata Vergine, Saint-Saëns’s Christmas Oratorio, Varèse’s Offrandes, Lebič’s Zgodba – Fable, and Globokar’s Sternbild der Grenze. One of her most celebrated performances has so far been Ariadne’s monologue from Monteverdi's Lament of Ariadne in the Golden Hall of Vienna Musikverein.
Barbara Jernejčič Fürst is one of few artists focused on contemporary works by Slovenian composers – she has premiered more than 50 works by such composers as J. Jež, L. Lebič, M. Lipovšek, P. Šivic, M. Kogoj, I. Petrić, V. Globokar, U. Rojko, T. Habe, J. Golob, P. Mihelčič, A. Srebotnjak, Č. Sojar-Voglar, A. Čopi, U. Pompe, L. Vrhunc, and B. Jež-Brezavšček.
Recording for record labels from Slovenia and abroad, Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has appeared on more than 10 CDs. She has released a recording of the complete art songs by M. Kogoj together with the pianist Gaiva Bandzinaite. For her newest CD Dotiki (“Touches”), Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has recorded works for solo voice by V. Globokar, U. Pompe, L. Vrhunc, Jež-Brezavšček, L. Berio, and A. Bauld, with two arias by Claudio Monteverdi enclosing the selection.

COMPOSITIONS:

Claudio Monteverdi: Disprezzata Regina iz L'incoronazione di Poppea
The present recording contains works mostly written by contemporary composers. As a contrast, the artist Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has decided to include two baroque arias from the opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), written by a great Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). For sure, this opera is his greatest stage masterpiece; the action takes place in the time of Emperor Nero in Rome and is considered the first opera with historical content. Unlike numerous baroque operas with highlighted external theatrical splendor, in The Coronation of Poppea the composer focuses on deepening the characters and human passions with music. Even the libretto itself dictates him to do so as it contains numerous dramatic elements and features Emperor Nero’s love to Poppea. Both arias found on this record exude tragic pathos and Poppea’s strong emotions.

Luciano Berio: Sequenza III (1965)

Luciano Berio (1925-2003) produced a series of works for solo instruments and also for woman’s voice under the name Sequenzas. These difficult works require great musical and technical skills from the performer.

Sequenza III for women’s voice explores the expressive possibilities of human breath. The short text, whose words and syllables are often combined in different ways in the piece, was written by Markus Kuttner.
Making use of phonetic and semantic fragments of individual word units to express various parts of the piece, the composer managed to create an extraordinary range of expressive possibilities. Different types of expression are extremely difficult to perform – from stammering to long held passages, from a wild cry to hastily articulated babbling.
The composer included instructions for six different singing techniques:
• conventional singing with normal articulation of the text;
• change of vocalization (murmuring, whispering, nasal sounds);
• other sounds such as clapping and snapping;
• vocal sounds such as laughing, coughing, sneezing;
• hand gestures – changing the natural sounds by putting the hand in front of the mouth;
• body motion that changes the sound.
Luciano Berio wrote a number of indications for different moods, which change unusually quickly, forcing the performer to make sudden emotional leaps. The indications should not be understood as a way to express despair or dreaminess but as an instruction on how to interpret the rhythm and the sounds.
The order of the mood shifts is closely related to the use of the text, which follows the articulation.

Larisa Vrhunc: Regen Liebe (1997) (Rain Love)

The piece is based on poems by four contemporary German authors. I have chosen some fragments of the texts and reordered them in such a way that I was able to catch a palette of “female” feelings. The inner world, the intimacy, is therefore more important than the story. The piece was written for the excellent German soprano Anna-Maria Bogner.
Larisa Vrhunc

Vinko Globokar: Second thoughts (1995)

“Second Thoughts” (1995) for woman’s voice is the second part of the trilogy. “Letters” for tenor, viola, cello, double bass and two clarinets, the first part of the trilogy, is about a person writing a letter about love, trade, insults, and war. The person expresses himself with speech, singing, yelling, and even with writing on different parts of tables and boards. In the second part the recipient reads the letter and contemplates it. After she silently observes the letter, she decides to send back a reply – “Réponse à letters” for voice, flute, accordion and percussion.
Vinko Globokar

Urška Pompe: Door to Day (2006)

a day as a fresh start,
with challenges, adventures, curiosities, and, sometimes, inconveniences,
hidden behind countless doors:
some we open,
the others we leave closed,
some can be opened easily,
the others with difficulty,
they can even open in front of us,
while the others remain closed forever.

The work was composed on the initiative of the mezzo-soprano Barbara and her “opened doors”, in 2004.
Urška Pompe

Brina Jež: G-Song for Barbara (2004)

- Feelings
- Expressions
- Passions
G-Song for Barbara or “About Birth and Time Travel”
Layers, Passions, Expressions, Wrappings, Sounds, Feelings, Intentions
G-Song for Barbara for voice solo was commissioned by mezzo-soprano Barbara Jernejčič Fürst, who also premiered it in December 2004 in the Concert Atelier series of the Society of Slovene composers.
For this recording Barbara Jernejčič Fürst has chosen three of the total seven movements, which deal with different spheres of living, which are a part of a human entity or enter this entity. The three parts are connected with the inner expression of human senses, feelings and expressions in an indirect, internal and general sphere.
The “Expressions” represent a path of an inner flow to the outside world. In the course of action, the flow transforms into a new shape, and, as it comes outside, it can be accepted and it can evoke a reaction. The flow goes through the bubbling mass of reception and the transmutation of experiences until it reacts to its new expression as it returns to the original shape.
The “Feelings” represent the opposite path – the responses to the manifestation in the outside world and events from the outside that resonate at the level of senses and flow into the inner world as impressions. The responses are rich in details and information, which rationalize itself on the way to the inside.
The “Passions” with its basic, straightforward buoyancy that contains the crux of the life power and the bright crystals of playfulness provoke an immediate emotional reaction, directed towards an outside target through the supremacy of an unrestrained ego.
The structure at the micro level is based on individual fragments, with duration comparable to the duration of a breath. The vocal material goes beyond the usual sound scope of classical singing or ordinary speech. The notation partly uses the applied patterns of contemporary music and partly new symbols, which are not definite but require additional exploration of vocal possibilities in order to convey the basic idea. When noted, an additional phonemes, such as h, g and n, are added to the mixture of vowels. The mixtures of consonants also appear, while sometimes the consonants are presented in a changed form, which is not found in speech. It is important to properly phrase the high-pitched passages in order to precisely execute different types of glissandi.
The rustling of a paper, an additional sound source, is caused by long, narrow music scrolls that are being rolled at the one end unrolled at the other by the performer. The notation is written with a red calligraphy pen, what symbolizes the spontaneity of gestures and the joy of hand shaping.
Brina Jež Brezavšček

Alison Bauld: The Witches' Song (1990) (listen!)

Dramatic structure in the works of Alison Bauld is created by combining elements of theater with elements of music – the use of voice and instrument. Her works for voice and piano show her strong interest in art song, which is the genre that satisfies her the most. Her keen interest for vocal music is also evident in The Witches’ Song (1990) for soprano solo, which is based on a dialogue among the Three Witches from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Composer’s wish and a great challenge to a performer is to present each of the Witches with a distinct voice and, in such way, to create a dialogue that is not interrupted until Hecate enters the scene. Therefore, the performer has to play a multi-layered personality.

Claudio Monteverdi: "Addio, Roma" from L'incoronazione di Poppea