LIEDER ALIVE! Mahler Recording Project Video:

Mahler Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and String Quartet

 

In 2015 LIEDER ALIVE! embarked on a unique collaboration with the award-winning Alexander String Quartet and the acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Kindra Scharich, on the performance and recording of some the great Mahler orchestral Lieder, transcribed for voice and string quartet by Zakarias Grafilo, the Quartet’s first violinist.

Typically, Lieder are scored for a single singer and piano, or later, as the artform developed, for singer and orchestra. Commissioned by LIEDER ALIVE!, Mr. Grafilo’s exquisite Lieder transcriptions combine the lushness of the orchestral versions with the intimacy of chamber music, and the result is something completely new.

The Alexander String Quartet and Ms. Scharich performed the Mahler cycles on the opening concert of LIEDER ALIVE!’s 2017/18 Liederabend Series in September 2017; subsequently, in Spring 2018, thanks to our KICKSTARTER donors, the recording of the three of Gustav Mahler’s beloved song cycles: Lieder eines Fahrenden gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), the Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder was completed. With a concurrent October 30 Celebration, the CD was released in 2018 on Foghorn Classics.

In meinem Himmel is now available on Amazon and iTunes/Apple Music.
“Along with the impassioned, elegant and exquisitely nuanced playing of the members of the Alexander String Quartet,” “…[Kindra] Scharich makes this album an extraordinary and complete musical and poetic accomplishment, something that should be savored for both its new perspectives on Mahler’s well-known songs and for the exemplary artistry of these musicians.”

“The performances, by the quartet and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, are beautifully modulated and full of life.”

    — Joshua Kosman, Classical Music Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle