Vienna: Fin de Siécle

Alpha Classics

Fin-de-siécle Vienna, once wonderfully described as “the inner machinery of modernity,” was the stomping ground of the heavy thinkers and creators who would influence every branch of 20th century culture. Freud, Hofmannsthal, Schoenberg, Klimt: the list could go on and on. The Vienna they reflected was dichotomous – outward virtue, inward decadence.

This collection of 18 songs by Schoenberg (Vier Lieder, Op2), Webern (Funf Lieder), Berg (Sieben Frühe Lieder), Zemlinsky (Lieder Op 2,5,7), Wolf (Mignon 1-4) and Alma Mahler (including Die stille Stadt), sung with alluring self-control by Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan with Dutch pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, contains all that symbolised the musical spirit of that time and place: dark sensuality, ambiguous unease, and that unmistakable premonition of all that was to shake the world in 1914.