“Charlston’s voice is little short of miraculous… a true star.”
The Evening Standard, October 2023
Mezzo Soprano Helen Charlston’s ability to make each performance completely her own and her depth of connection with audiences has earned her international acclaim as “one of the most exciting voices in the new generation of British singers” (Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone).
She was recently a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2021-23), and was the 2023 Gramophone Award winner for Best Concept Album and also collected the Vocal award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards for her second Delphian album: Battle Cry: the only recording that year to win at both ceremonies.
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Helen Charlston and pianist Sholto Kynoch present their take on Robert Schumann’s famous song cycle Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love), based on poems by early 19th century German poet Heinrich Heine. The sixteen songs convey the birth of love, wonder, fragility in the face of love, emotions and nuances, wounds, sorrow, nostalgia, dreams, tears, betrayal, pain, consolation, death... The music expresses all the misfortunes that the poet had to face, as if a mirror image existed between the poet and Schumann.
This recording also features other songs based on texts by Heine, demonstrating the German poet’s popularity with Austro-German composers of the early nineteenth century. Songs by Carl Loewe, Josephine Lang, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn complete this exploration of Heine’s poetry. In addition to Schumann’s cycle, the other highlight of this recital is the first recording of a work commissioned by Helen Charlston from composer (and singer) Héloïse Werner, Knight’s Dream, also based on a text by Heine, and conceived as a companion piece for Dichterliebe. Imaginative and daring, this new work is both a tribute and a playful dialogue with Schumann and Heine, bringing the past and present together in a lyrical conversation.
