Liszt / Mahler / Schubert - Wanderer Without Words [CD]

Or her first recital, Juliette Journaux evokes the figure of the Wanderer: a walker, a nomad, a man who walks alone without apparent purpose. He confronts a nature that is beyond him and his deepest thoughts. The wanderer's roaming is also indistinct from a dream and the acceptance of another time. Musically, one immediately thinks of the worlds of Schubert, Mahler and Wagner. Another dimension of this project is the transcription for which Juliette Journaux is passionate. In tackling the difficult exercise of transcribing vocal or orchestral works for piano alone, she draws on her knowledge of the orchestra and the operatic voice thanks to her three master degrees in piano, vocal accompaniment and voice direction from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. The album opens with Schubert's "Der Wanderer" in a piano transcription by Liszt, followed by his Drei Klavierstücke D. 946; then comes her transcription "Ich bin der Welt" from Mahler's Rückert Lieder, full of pain and sorrow. She also evokes Wagner and his opera Siegfried where Wotan becomes the wanderer. The farewell and renunciation of the world that is "Der Abschied" from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde concludes the programme