Born: January 18, 1944 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Died: May 12, 2008 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
The Dutch soprano, Marianna [Marjanne] Kweksilber, was born in 1944. Her repertoire stretches out from renaissance and baroque up to and including the 20th century music. She made her opera debut in 1977 in the premier of the opera Axel by Reinbert de Leeuw and Jan van Vlijmen. Later she sang also as Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. She performed works of Satie, Messiaen, Zemlinsky, Schreker, Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Paul Hindemith, among others. She made numerous appearances with the Schönberg Ensemble and at festivals in her homeland and abroad. Later she also gave singing lessons.
Marianna Kweksilber made recordings for the Dutch label Harlekijn. Her solo recording debut with mélodies of Satie was done in 1977 for this label together with Reinbert de Leeuw. J.S. wrote in Luister (Dutch equivalent of Gramophone) wrote (May 1977): " ... It is not possible to say that Marjanne Kwelsilber, was carried away by a kind of De Leeuw trance, but for me it is certain that the singer had not sung the Satie mélodies that way if De Leeuw had not been at the piano. Entirely from the text, without pose, the singer puts aside her manners and sings completely in line with Satie's unreal art, that in many of his mélodies is yet more rare and fragile than in the piano works ..." The music means for her a kind of liberation. Marjanne: "Therefore I need it so much. You can name it an escape, but I call it a way of communication". She says to recognize in Satie much from her own live. "Yes, a kind of modest passion, the loneliness and irony, compassion and distance".
Other recordings: for Accent: complete recording of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1982), together with La Petite Bande, René Jacobs (Orfeo) and Magdalena Falewicz (Amor), under Sigiswald Kuijken; for Telefunken/Teldec: J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 51 under Gustav Leonhardt; for VARA: Alban Berg's 4 Jugendlieder (1980); George Frideric Handel's Messiah; for Channel Classics: L.v. Beethoven's Songs with Anner Bylsma and Stanley Hoogland (1993), Songs of Modern Times Dutch Jewish Composers (1995); for Donemus Records: Matthijs Vermeulen's Chamber Music (1995), Jeff Hamburg's Songs (2001), Jacques Bank's De Bijlmer Oper under Ernst van Tiel (2004); many works by modern Dutch composers on various labels. |