Christianne
Stotijn

Joseph Breinl

A Christianne Stotijn recital at La Monnaie always offers originality and discovery. After a first part devoted to Brahms lieder and early songs by the Italian composer Respighi, the mezzo-soprano invites us to listen to Bartók’s Eight Hungarian Folksongs, arrangements of peasant songs. Folk wisdom and music were fertile ground for the composer’s inventiveness – a phenomenon we also find in the Folk Songs of Berio, who declared, of the songs that originally inspired him: ‘in a sense, I re-composed them.’ Christianne Stotijn’s generous timbre and the attention she always brings to the nuances of the text will, we can be sure, reveal all the richness and uniqueness of this programme: a programme that takes us on a journey from America to Azerbaijan, via Hungary and Italy.

Programme

• Béla Bartók – Nyolc magyar népdal [Eight Hungarian Folksongs], BB. 47 (1907–1917)
• Luciano Berio – Folk Songs, (1964)
• Works by Johannes Brahms, Ottorino Respighi