Glass Shatterers! Erna Sack - J. Strauss II: Voices of Spring, 1937 Live, High F6, G6, B6

Описание: ~The "Glass Shatterers!" series focuses on sopranos who sustain High F, or sing higher.

For the 2021 holiday season, I'm posting a series through New Year's Eve of festive concert waltzes for coloratura soprano.

THE SONGBIRD: Erna Sack (1898 - 1972) was born in Berlin and studied music in Prague. She was signed by Bruno Walter to sing small roles at the Berlin State Opera in 1928 but it wasn't until 1930 that her stratospheric high notes helped her become a star soprano across Germany as Norina, Gilda, and Zerbinetta (Richard Strauss composed a new cadenza for her that seems to have been lost). In 1935 she made her first series of concert tours — to Austria, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom — and signed a recording contract with Telefunken. Sack appeared in German operetta films and continued to concertize internationally until she retired in 1957. I didn't think I'd be able to post any selections of Erna Sack since all of her recordings seemed to be on YouTube already and I only post unique content, but I did not find any listing of this live rendition of the “Voices of Spring” waltz, with her signature flourish from High G up to a series of staccato volleys on High B6, as well as a final High F. Here’s to ending 2021 on a high note!

THE MUSIC: Johann Strauss II wrote "Frühlingsstimmen" (Voices of Spring) in 1882 for German soprano Bertha Schwartz (aka Bianca Bianchi); she premiered this concert piece at a charity performance in Vienna. The German lyrics about the sounds of nature and warbling birds are by Richard Genée. Strauss came from a family of Viennese composers in the 19th century who specialized in sophisticated waltzes and light music, but Johann II's music was (and remains) the most popular. He was known as "The Waltz King" in his time and most of the Viennese waltzes we hum now were composed by him -- not to mention his enormously successful and genre-defining operettas such as "Die Fledermaus."