FRANZ SCHUBERT: DIE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN
by Michael Kelly + David Leisner
FOR YOUR
GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Michael Kelly and David Leisner, Die Schöne Müllerin
Best Arrangement, Instruments And Vocals
Eifersucht und Stolz, arranged by David Leisner
ABOUT
LISTEN
Baritone, Michael Kelly and guitarist, David Leisner bring their deeply colorful perspective to a newly-crafted arrangement by Leisner of Franz Schubert’s seminal work, Die Schöne Müllerin for voice and guitar. The twenty song lieder cycle aptly recounts the story of a boy who’s journey to find an apprenticeship ends in a deep dive through the emotional landscape of young unrequited love. The arrangement for the guitar beautifully heightens the intimacy and immediacy of the work, while offering a voyeuristic insight into the caverness emotional poetic landscape.
ABOUT Michael Kelly and David Leisner
Praised as “expressive and dynamic” and “vocally splendid”, American baritone Michael Kelly is sought-after for his riveting interpretations of recital, concert and operatic repertoire.
Mr. Kelly has recently performed at Santa Fe Opera, Carnegie Hall, with New York City Opera, the New World Symphony, Seattle Symphony and the Cincinnati May Festival. He performed Bernstein’s Mass with the Mostly Mozart Festival under the baton of Louis Langrée, and gave the world premier of a new chamber work by David Del Treidici at NYC's Symphony Space. In recent seasons he has been heard in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin with celebrated guitarist David Leisner, The role of Hannah Before in Kaminsky’s As One, the role of Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Papageno in Mozart's Magic Flute, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, and the title role in the NY premier of Carlyle Floyd’s newest opera Prince of Players.
An avid interpreter and supporter of new music, he has given world premieres by Matthew Aucoin, David Del Tredici, Mohammed Fairouz, John Gover, Laura Kaminsky, Ben Moore, Tobias Picker among others. Kelly is a passionate recital and chamber music interpreter, and was a founder and artistic director of NY’s SongFusion and the Room to Breathe concert series. He can be heard on multiple recordings as well as a documentary called Secret Music, celebrating the life and compositions of David Del Tredici.
David Leisner is an extraordinarily versatile musician with a multi-faceted career as an electrifying performing artist, a distinguished composer, and a master teacher.
“Among the finest guitarists of all time”, according to American Record Guide, David Leisner’s career began auspiciously with top prizes in both the 1975 Toronto and 1981 Geneva International Guitar Competitions. His recent seasons have taken him around the US, including his solo debut with the Atlanta Symphony, a major tour of Australia and New Zealand, and debuts and reappearances in China, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, the U.K., Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Puerto Rico and Mexico. An innovative three-concert series at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall included the first all-Bach guitar recital in New York’s history, and currently he is the Artistic Director of Guitar Plus, a New York series devoted to chamber music with the guitar. He has also performed chamber music at the Santa Fe, Music in the Vineyards, Vail Valley, Crested Butte, Rockport, Cape and Islands, Bargemusic, Bay Chamber, Maui, Portland, Sitka and Angel Fire Festivals, with Zuill Bailey, Tara O’Connor, Eugenia Zukerman, Kurt Ollmann, Lucy Shelton, Ida Kavafian, the St. Lawrence, Enso, Escher and Vermeer Quartets and many others. Celebrated for expanding the guitar repertoire, David Leisner has premiered works by many important composers, including David Del Tredici, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Philip Glass, Richard Rodney Bennett, Peter Sculthorpe, Osvaldo Golijov, Randall Woolf, Gordon Beeferman and Carlos Carillo, while championing the works of neglected 19th-century guitar composers J.K. Mertz and Wenzeslaus Matiegka.
