HUGO WOLF: GEISTLICHE LIEDER, PRIREDIL MAX REGER, THERESA PLUT (SOPRANO), POLONA GANTAR (ORGAN)

Classical and Modern Music

Format: CD

Code: 115721

EAN: 3838898115721

Geistliche Lieder für Sopran und Orgel, bearbeitet von Max Reger / Sacred songs for soprano and organ, arranged by Max Reger, performed by Theresa Plut (soprano) and Polona Gantar (organ).

Spanisches Liederbuch / Spanish songbook
1. Nun bin ich dein 5:00
Now I am yours
2 Die du Gott gebarst, du Reine 3:03
 You who bore God, you most Pure
3. Nun wandre, Maria 3:08
Journey onward now, Mary
4. Die ihr schwebet 3:40
You who hover
5. Führ mich, Kind, nach Betlehem! 3:45
Lead me, child, to Bethlehem!
6. Ach, des Knaben Augen 2:08
Ah, the eyes of the lad
7. Mühvoll komm' ich und beladen 6:12
Filled with care I come, and encumbered
8. Ach, wie lang die Seele schlummert! 3:45
Ah, how long the soul slumbers!
9. Herr, was trägt der Boden hier 3:06
Lord, what does this ground bear
10. Wunden trägst du, mein Geliebter 5:33
The wounds you bear, my Beloved

Gedichte von Eduard Mörike / Poems by Eduard Mörike
11. Schlafendes Jesuskind 3:31
The Sleeping Christchild
12. Karwoche 4:53
Holy Week
13. Zum neuen Jahr 2:03
To the New Year
14. Gebet 2:40
Prayer

Max Reger (1873–1916), composer, theorist, pianist, conductor, one of the greatest organists of his time and a devotee of Bach’s art, expressed his admiration and appreciation of Hugo Wolf’s art by arranging and interpre-ting the master’s works. Reger also made instrumental settings of the songs of Brahms, Strauss and Schubert, but, in terms of the number of arrangements, he was most predisposed towards Wolf. With his selection of fourteen of Wolf’s songs (Ten Spiritual Songs from The Spanish Songbook and Four Spiritual Songs from the Mörike Collection), he sought to emphasise the spiritual side of the works, and as an extraordinary authority on the organ’s expressive abilities, he transposed the original chamber character of the spiritual content to the environment of church music.
In the unique course of the deeply tragic life of Hugo Wolf (1860–1903), two short but strikingly intense peri-ods of compositional creativity gave rise to works that opened a new chapter in German song (lieder), while at the same time paying tribute to the tradition of this (German) genre at the close of the nineteenth century. Until Wolf was twenty-seven, his creative work was known only to a narrow circle of friends, as his first lieder were published only in 1887. Prior to that, as an ardent Wagnerian, his music criticism published in the Wiener Sa-lonblatt had upset many music circles, thus gaining the young composer an unenviable reputation. Both before and after these events, however, Wolf enjoyed the faithful devotion (both human and material) of his selected friends, without whom his creative path may have been quite different. Following the publication of the first two volumes of lieder by a small publisher that had been found by the composer’s friend Friedrich Eckstein, Wolf embarked on a four-year period of feverish creativity. During this time (1887–1891), he wrote more than 200 poems on texts by Mörike, Eichendorff, Goethe and Keller, as well as setting Spanish poetry translated by Paul Heyse and Emanuel Geibel. In his literary search, he focused not only on contemporary poetry, but also embraced the verses of great poets of the German past, especially those not yet set to music by composers (Eduard Mörike).
Wolf transferred his subtle and sensitive attitude towards poetry to the field of music in an original way. The concentrated expression of his musical language is always focused on the lyrical level of the verses. In a field of expanded tonality, he experimented with post-Wagnerian declamation (a declamatory vocal melody enabled the expressiveness of the poetry considerable freedom), while also retaining some elements of the lieder tradition of Schubert and Schumann.Irrespective of Wolf’s personal attitude towards religion, it is clear that he cultivated an empathy for spiritual content. Thus, he placed twelve spiritual poems at the centre of his 1888 collection based on Mörike’s texts, more than half of which were written after Wolf’s powerful experience of Parsifal in Bayreuth in August 1888. In the Spanish Songbook (1889), he went one step further: he separated the spiritual poems from the secular ones in terms of content, and opened the new collection with them, rounding them off thematically.
Wolf’s encounter with the Spanish Songbook was the result of his search for a story for an opera libretto. In the nineteenth century, Spanish themes were a source of excitement and attraction for German and French romantics. For Wolf, too, they represented a new source of inspiration, turning him from high poetry to Heyse’s and Geibel’s translations, or rather free reworkings, of unpretentious Spanish Renaissance verse.
The ten spiritual poems portray the distinctly mystical atmosphere of the south. In the first two poems, a sin-ner turns to the Virgin Mary in his yearning and appellation for the grace of God. The next four poems focus on the time of Jesus’ birth and childhood: in the third, Joseph gently encourages the pregnant and weary Mary on the way to Bethlehem; in the fourth, Mary silently implores the angels to calm the roaring of the wind in the palm leaves; in the fifth, a weary soul on the way to Jesus in Bethlehem hopes and asks for salvation; and the sixth poem thematises the seeking of God’s mercy in the eyes of the child. The seventh and eighth poems address the theme of salvation, while the final two poems are conceived as a dialogue with Jesus, in which a repentant sinner, from his love of Jesus, wants to take on the latter’s suffering.
Human awareness of sin, a repentant search for the grace of God, and meditation on the meaning of the in-carnation and the death of Jesus form the connecting thread of all of the songs. Wolf’s music ranges from the suggestive etherealness of church singing and prayer, to personal intimate and dramatic confession, realised musically between mystical fervor and internalised asceticism.
(Translation: Neville Hall)


The artistic career of soprano Theresa Plut has been marked by appearances at international venues under the baton of renowned conductors such as John Fiore, Alexander Joel, Alain Paris, Nicholas Milton, Emmanuel Villaume, and others. An artist of exceptional musicality, great emotional strength, depth and expressiveness, she became a member of the so-loist ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf immediately upon completing her studies, giving her debut as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute. This was followed by the roles of Walter (La Wally), Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Rosina (The Barber of Seville), Casilda (The Gondoliers), Serpetta (La finta giardiniera), Gretel (Hänsel and Gretel), Olympia (The Tales of Hoffmann), among others. In leading roles, she has thrilled audiences on various opera stages, such as Pfalztheater Kaiserlautern, Theater Winterthur, the Royal Opera House in Bangkok, and at the SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana. She has collaborated with celebrated directors, including Christof Loy and Philipp Harnoncourt, and performed with renowned orchestras, such as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Opernorchester Stuttgart, Jenaer Philharmonie, Württembergische Philharmonie, the Bach Collegium Zürich, the Concerto Munich Baroque Orchestra, the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra. Her extensive repertoire ranges from early music to works by contemporary composers, and she has made an outstanding impression on concert stages in performances of Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Seasons, Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, Brahms’s A German Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. On At the invitation of conductor Emmanuel Villaume, she performed alongside Anna Netrebko on the European tour of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta, as well as participated in the recording of the opera for the label Deutsche Grammophon. In addition to her opera and concert activities, Theresa Plut has established herself as an outstanding interpreter of art song. At solo recitals in Slovenia and abroad, she dedicates herself to promoting the heritage of Slovenian art song.
Theresa Plut began her musical career at McGill University in Montreal and continued at the Hochschule für Musik Zürich and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. Her mentors were Marisa Gaetanne, Jane Thorner Mengedoht, Richard Miller and Janina Stano. Theresa Plut has been a prizewinner at several international compe-titions and has been awarded various scholarships. She has served as a visiting professor at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia and has received an honorary professorship from the Central National University of Beijing. She is employed as an assistant professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Music and regularly conducts seminars in Slovenia and abroad. Theresa was born to Slovenian parents in Vancouver, Canada.


Organist Polona Gantar studied at and graduated from the Department of Music Education at the Ljubljana Academy of Music. At the same time, she also studied the organ (concert course) at the Carinthian Conservatory of Music in Klagenfurt with Professor Klaus Kuchling, graduating with distinction. In 2003, she completed her master’s degree in the organ at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where her professor was Peter Planyavsky.
During her studies and beyond, she furthered her education in Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands at numerous masterclasses for the organ and improvisation, led by Almuth Rössler, Olivier Latry, Jos van der Kooy, Peter Planyavsky, Michael Radulescu, Ewald Kooiman, Christoph Wolff and others. She gives solo recitals at home and abroad, collaborates with Slovenia’s most distinguished choirs, and performs in chamber ensembles with solo singers and instrumentalists.
Polona Gantar regularly records for RTV Slovenia’s archive and record label, which has released her CDs entitled The Harp of the Fine Rain and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. In 2007, she recorded the composition Bolero by Austrian composer Peter Planyavsky for the German label Motette (Peter Planyavsky – Ausgewählte Orgelwerke). She has recorded several other CDs with various Slovenian choirs, and for the RTV Slovenia archive has, among other things, recorded the solo organ works of Primož Ramovš. In 2014, 2016 and 2018, she collaborated as an organist in CD releases by the international Utopia & Reality Chamber Choir for the Norwegian label Cantando Musikkforlag (conducted by Ragnar Rasmussen and Urša Lah).
Polona Gantar is a music editor at Radio Slovenia’s Programme Ars and writes professional music articles for the music journal Glasna. She also serves as an organist at the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation at the Three Bridges in Ljubljana.