Olaf Bär

Olaf Bär is considered to be one of the foremost Lieder interpreters of his generation and regularly appears in the world's greatest recital venues. He has made major recital tours of Australia and Japan and has given recitals in New York, San Francisco, Washington and Philadelphia, in addition to many international festivals including Salzburg. He is currently one of the most frequent recitalists at the Wigmore Hall in London. Future recital venues include Barcelona, Dublin, Brussels, Munich, Toronto, Washington, Siena, Genova, Stockholm, Istanbul, Madrid and Vienna's Musikverein.

You can hear a Great Songs program of Bär's Lieder.

Bär is equally at home in the concert hall and opera house. His concert repertoire covers music from the baroque to the twentieth century including Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Bach's St Matthew Passion and many of the cantatas, Britten's War Requiem, the Brahms requiem, and Haydn's Creation. He has appeared with many of the world's finest orchestras and conductors including the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas and the Orchestra of La Scala, under Riccardo Muti. His work in Opera includes appearances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Harlekin/Ariadne auf Naxos and Papageno), at La Scala, Milan (Papageno), at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (Harlekin/Gugliemo), in Frankfurt (Gugliemo), at the Vienna State Opera (Harlekin, Olivier/Capriccio), the Netherlands Opera (Count/Figaro), and the title role in Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne, as well as many principal roles at the Semper Oper in Dresden.

Early in 1997, Olaf Bar made his highly successful American operatic debut as Papageno in Chicago, and has also appeared more recently as a guest artist in Dresden, performing as Marcello, Germost Pere and as the Count/Figaro (with Colin Davis). Olaf Bär's success at the Vienna Festival in May, in Schubert's Alfonso e Estrella has led to a return invitation to sing Dr Falke in 1999, also with Harnoncourt/Flimm. His other future operatic appearances including the Count /Figaro in Rome, Wolfram in Dresden and Don Giovanni in Verona.

His recordings of opera and concert repertoire include performances in Ein Deusches Requiem and Die Zauberflöte with Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players, a disc of Bach Cantatas with Peter Schreier and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and both the Duruflé and Fauré Requiems. All are available on EMI Classics.

In the summer of 1985 Olaf Bär made his first Lieder record for EMI Classics, a programme of Schumann's Dichterliebe Op.48 and Liederkreis Op.39. Since then, under his exclusive contract for Lieder with EMI Classics, he has recorded much of the most important Lieder repertoire, including Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, (which won a Gramophone award) Winterreise and Schwanengesang, a selection of Wolf's Mörike Lieder, Schumann's Liederkreis Op.24 and Kerner-Lieder Op.35, and a disc of songs by Brahms. His accompanist in all of these recitals was the late Geoffrey Parsons.

Bär has also joined forces with the Swedish mezzo soprano Anne Sophie von Otter to record Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch, again recorded with Geoffrey Parsons. The songs are performed in an order devised by Bär himself, and the recording was released by EMI Classics in June 1995. EMI Classics issued a recordings featuring Olaf Bär in August, September and October 1995. First, a disc of Brahms' Liebesliederwalzer, Op.52, and Neue Liebeslieder, Op.65, and Schumann's Spanische Liebeslieder, Op.138. For this Bär was joined once again by Anne Sophie von Otter, as well as soprano Barbara Bonney, tenor Kurt Streit and the pianists Helmut Deutsch and Bengt Forsberg. This was followed by a recital of Liebeslieder and a collection of Lieder written by German composers primarily known for their operas, once again in partnership with Helmut Deutsch.

In August 1996 EMI Classics released a new recording of Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch on which Bär is joined not only by Helmut Deutsch, but also by the soprano Dawn Upshaw. In November '96 this was followed by a Christmas album, Weihnachten in Deutschen Lied and in January 1997, a compilation of Schumann Lieder, Romances & Ballades, both recorded with the accompanist Helmut Deutsch. In November 1997 EMI Classics released a collection of Brahms Lieder, Op 63, 71, 72 and 94, together with Four Serious Songs Op 121, accompanied by the pianist Helmut Deutsch. Other recordings have included a disc of Schumann Lieder, Op 25 & 27, with the soprano Juliane Banse and the accompanist Helmut Deutsch, released in April 1998.