Alexander Kipnis; "VIER ERNSTE GESÄNGE"; Johannes Brahms

This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated.
===============
Alexander Kipnis--bass
Gerald Moore---piano
1936
=================
"Ukrainian-American bass, 1891 - 1978

“My father was born into a pitifully poor family in the Ukraine and had little going for him as a young boy except for a rather sweet soprano voice. One day, a visiting cantor from Bessarabia heard the lad singing in the local synagogue choir and persuaded my father’s mother, with the promise of some payment, to let him take the child back to his own synagogue to sing. During this period of a few years, my father was befriended by one of the choir’s male singers. The town of Novybug, with its largely unpaved streets, had particularly muddy paths when the post-winter thaws came and whenever it rained. In exchange for singing lessons and the rudiments of reading music, my father would scrupulously scrub the rubber boots of the older singer. One of the pieces the older man introduced him to was “Der Leiermann,” the haunting final song from Schubert’s Winterreise. My father was affected by the sad, almost frozen tune of the organ grinder, and in later life he often related how, as a young boy, he loved songs in minor keys and could not understand why anyone should ever want to write in the major mode.” (Igor Kipnis)


Alexander Kipnis studied conducting at the Warsaw Conservatory and went to Berlin where he received vocal tuition by Ernst Grenzebach (other students were Lauritz Melchior and Max Lorenz). He appeared at Hamburg in 1916 and at Wiesbaden from 1917 to 1922 and became the leading bass at the Berlin Städtische Oper (1919 - 1929). Thereafter he joined the Vienna State Opera and the Berlin State Opera and was engaged at the Bayreuth Festival. He was admired as an outstanding Wagner and Mozart singer as well as a great interpreter of Italien and Russian roles. He soon became an accomplished lieder singer. By 1937 he was a familiar artist in most of the world’s leading opera houses, especially in America. He became an American citizien in 1931. He was a regular member of the Chicaco Opera from 1923 to 1932 and made a late debut at the Met as Gurnemanz in 1940. There he also appeared as King Marke, Arkel, Hermann, Hagen, Hunding, Ochs von Lerchenau, Sarastro, Nicalantha in Délibes’ Lakmé and Boris Godunov. He stayed at the Met until 1952. He appeared in extensive and tremendously successful concert tours throughout America. After his retirement he became a renowned vocal coach at the College of Music in New York."; Cantabile subito