Killius, Ratzkowski, Staehli & Wittemeier: Tugend & Laster –

In her latest project, the soprano Andrea Chudak - known for her repertoire curiosity and joy of discovery - has dedicated herself to very cheeky settings by the composers Hans Stähli, Regina Wittemeier, Torsten Ratzkowski and Rainer Killius. The individual songs on this recording are as colorful as the accompanying poems by Wilhelm Busch. The poet with the good powers of observation, especially for everyday events, always succeeds in setting the peculiarities of human nature in small satirical scenes and drawing some surprising conclusions from them. At all times, composers have set texts by respected poets to music. And in the German-speaking world, nobody can ignore the texts of the poet, draftsman and painter Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908). The stories of Max and Moritz are and were formative for every child - the figures of teacher Lempel, widow Bolte or Fips the monkey or Plisch and Plum, drawn with a sharp pen, have burned into everyone. He describes his protagonists in striking words and as a reader one somehow assumes that the same images for these texts unfold in everyone's imagination. The present recording clearly shows how different this can be. Compositions for a soprano voice by four different composers show different intonations, perspectives and narrative styles of one and the same poet.