Melancolie (Brahms / Mandyczewski)

“Having a choice of roots is always an asset. Growing up multilingual fosters cognitive flexibility… I was lucky enough to live between Romania and Germany,” says Konstantin Krimmel. Together with his longtime musical partner Ammiel Bushakevitz, who also has “mixed roots”, he sought to bring together the composers Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) and Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–1929), who met in Vienna in the late 1870s and maintained a close friendship: on the one hand, the established composer from faraway Hamburg, author of nearly 200 Lieder and vocal works; on the other, the young student from distant Bukovina, son of an Orthodox priest, who grew up immersed in the Romanian of his mother’s side and the Ukrainian of his father’s, a pupil of a Mendelssohn disciple. His eighteen Romanian Songs were published in 1885 in a bilingual Romanian-German edition, based on texts by Vasile Alecsandri (1821–1890), “a magnificent poet who wrote in a highly evocative style that has deep connections with nature. A nature that I love and from which I draw upon as a source of interpretation in every recital,” says Krimmel. They are recorded here for the first time in their original language, Romanian. The two composers also share a love of Schubert—Mandyczewski was the first publisher of his complete works—a fascination with folk songs, and a taste for melancholy, which is felt throughout this programme.