Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

Op. 24 Liederkreis after poems by Heinrich Heine (20 min.)

1. I get up in the morning
2. It drives me there
3. I walk among the trees
4. Dear little love
5. Beautiful cradle my songs
6. Wait, wait, wild shipman
7. Mountains and castles look down
8. At first I almost wanted to despair
9. With myrtles and roses

from 6 Etudes in Canonical Form Op. 56 (8 min.)

• No. 4 Innig
• No. 5 Not too fast

Born in 1995, baritone Äneas Humm comes from a Swiss-Hungarian family of artists. He became a member of the Zürcher Sänger­knaben at the age of six and was sent to boarding school at the Vorarlberg State Conservatory in Feldkirch at the age of fifteen. Humm completed his vocal training at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen and at the Juilliard School in New York. In recognition of his achievements to date, he was awarded the OPUS Klassik as Young­Artist of the Year in 2022 and has also previously been awarded the Deutschlandfunk Sponsorship Prize.

While still a student, he made his debut at the Stadttheater Bremerhaven and accepted guest engagements at Theater Osnabrück. The Nationaltheater Weimar signed Äneas Humm to its ensemble in 2019; in 2020 he moved to the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe for two years and was a member of the ensemble at the Theater St. Gallen until summer 2023. Last season, he could be seen there as Ophémon in Joseph Bologne's L'AMANT ANONYME, as Doktor Falke in DIE FLEDERMAUS by Johann Strauss, as Papageno in Mozart's Magic Flute and as Roucher in Giordano's ANDREA CHÉNIER.

Future engagements will take Äneas Humm back to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, for example, to take part in John Adams' ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA in fall 2023. This will be followed by his debuts at the Opera di Roma as Papageno and Harlequin, as well as at the Theater an der Wien in Salieri's opera KUBLAI KHAN as Posega.

Äneas Humm is also in great demand as a concert pianist and is always a welcome guest with renowned European orchestras, including the Bremen Philharmonic, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Nederlands Noordorkest and Deutsche Staats­philharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz. In December 2023, he will once again appear at the Hamburg State Opera with Bach's Christmas­oratorio choreographed by John Neumeier.

Kit Armstrong has fascinated the music world ever since he entered the international stage twenty years ago. Hardly any other young artist is as accomplished and universally trained in so many areas as he is. Celebrated by the New York Times as a "brilliant pianist" who "combines musical maturity and youthful audacity in his exceptional playing", Kit Armstrong has developed his very own artistic signature. His intensive preoccupation with music is naturally closely related to other arts, science and mathematics. His repertoire goes back to the 16th century, to the beginnings of keyboard music with the great English virginalists, and extends into the 21st century. His programs are a unique blend of musical discoveries with the great masterpieces of piano literature.

Kit Armstrong is dedicating a large part of his concert activities in 2024 to the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Under the motto "Expedition Mozart", he will perform with a newly formed ensemble of close friends at the Luxembourg Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Cologne Philharmonie as well as at the Ruhr Piano Festival and the Mozartfest Würzburg. In a variety of programs, the boundaries between chamber music and instrumental concertos in Mozart's oeuvre are deliberately blurred and supposedly familiar repertoire is explored anew. Performances of the violin sonatas with violinist Renaud Capuçon and all of Mozart's piano sonatas also continue to play a central role.

Kit Armstrong has recently caused quite a stir with his cycle on 500 years of piano music at the Ruhr Piano Festival and the Tokyo Spring Festival, among others. In five programs, he takes his listeners on a journey through five centuries of piano music from 1520 to 2020, from William Byrd to the 21st century. The musical currents, influences and cross-references unfold particularly impressively for the listener in the strict chronology of the programs. The concerts in Tokyo were recorded for Deutsche Grammophon's audio-visual platform Stage+.

Armstrong has worked with many leading conductors, including Christian Thielemann, Herbert Blomstedt, Kent Nagano, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen and François-Xavier Roth. He has performed with some of the world's finest orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewand­haus­orchester Leipzig, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. As a passionate chamber musician, Kit Armstrong maintains close artistic relationships with singers such as Marina Viotti, Christiane Karg and Benjamin Appl, the Armida and Schumann Quartets and the violinist Renaud Capuçon, with whom he has released a complete recording of all of Mozart's sonatas for piano and violin in 2023 (DGG). Recent solo recitals have taken him to the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Prinzregententheater in Munich, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Philharmonie de Luxembourg and the Kölner Philharmonie. He was Artist-in-Residence at the 2018 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Artist-in-Resonance at the Musik­kollegium Winterthur and is a long-standing partner of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Edition Peters publishes his compositions. His works have been commissioned by the Gewandhaus Leipzig and the Musik­kollegium Winterthur, among others.