Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) – excerpts

R. Strauss: Liebeslieder (Love Songs) – excerpts

Featuring: Helmut Deutsch – piano

When the ‘queen of coloraturas,’ Diana Damrau, and the ‘king of tenors,’ Jonas Kaufmann, take to the stage together, a memorable evening is guaranteed. Last time they enchanted the audience at Müpa Budapest with their fantastic evening of lieder by Wolf, while this time they will select from the works of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, with love as the leitmotif.

In Diana Damrau’s rendering of Richard Strauss’s ‘love songs,’ a magical fusion of music, voice and language arises. The world-famous soprano has been singing works by the German composer since the beginning of her career.

The songs Mahler wrote on the basis of The Boy’s Magic Horn, a collection of folk songs and poems, edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, are veritable genre scenes, often suggestive of a dialogue between a man and a woman. The duets and solo songs speak about yearning, love and suffering, and the harmony we are to witness will reveal these two wonderful artists not only as fine musicians but as brilliant performers as well.

Damrau and Kaufmann will be accompanied by Helmut Deutsch, one of the most committed interpreters of the lied repertoire, a wizard singers can wholeheartedly rely on.