Melodiya presents recordings of Hugo Wolf’s chamber vocal music, the last of the parts from the project Melodia Apriori.

This joint project of the agency Apriori Arts and Melodiya with the support of Yamaha features recordings of four chamber concerts that took place at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in the autumn and winter of 2016 with the participation of young Russian musicians. With these albums, Melodiya resumed the format of live recording after many years. The concluding concert and release of the project is dedicated to Hugo Wolf, a remarkable German composer of the late romantic era, who wrote over 300 songs during his short and tragic life. Four songbooks with lyrics by Eduard Mörike (Mörike-Lieder) composed between 1888 and 1891 are among the highest accomplishments of Wolf’s art and the traditions of German romantic songwriting. The programme also features Richard Strauss’s popular song Morgen and piano pieces by composers of the first half of the 20th century – Alban Berg’s only Sonata (it was the first opus of the future author of Wozzeck) and Paul Hindemith’s Introduction and Song (Einleitung und Lied) from his cycle of piano pieces, op.37. The works by Wolf, Strauss, Berg and Hindemith are performed by Andrei Jilihovschi, a soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia, and Vadym Kholodenko, one of the most promising pianists of the new generation and winner of the Triumph Youth Prize and prizes of the Van Cliburn, Franz Schubert, Gina Bachauer and Franz Liszt competitions.