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The soprano Caroline Melzer, born in Kronberg i.T. near Frankfurt, Germany, studied voice with Rudolf Piernay (Mannheim) and song arrangement with Ulrich Eisenlohr (Mannheim) and Irwin Gage (Saarbrücken). Already during her studies Caroline Melzer was engaged for important roles of the lyric repertoire in various opera houses. She performed the Donna Elvira in "Don Giovanni" at Staatstheater Cottbus, in Detmold and Lübeck. The theatre of Kaiserslautern signed her for several leading parts (e.g. "Merry Wives of Windsor", "Madame Pompadour"). Since 2007, she has been a permanent member of the singer ensemble of the Komische Oper Berlin and has since performed e.g. Fiordiligi in "Cosi fan tutte""and "Mimì in "La Bohème" and the countess in "Le Nozze di Figaro". Future projects are the rolle of Cordelia (Reimann, "Lear") in the new production by Hans Neuenfels as well as debuts as Lisa in Tchaikowsky’s "Pique Dame" and Leonore in the first edition of "Fidelio". In 2008, she debuted as the Merry Widow at the Volksoper Wien and regularly returns to perform there.
Caroline Melzer’s special love belongs to the song. Together with the pianist Anette Fischer-Lichdi she was invited to numerous recitals in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Within the context of her engagement as a concert singer she performed at festivals like the Ruhrtriennale, the UltraSchall Festival Berlin, the Mozartfest Würzburg, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Herbstliche Musiktage Bad Urach as well as the Gustav Mahler Musikwochen Toblach. She worked with e.g. Christoph Poppen, Konrad Junghänel, Jac van Steen, Frieder Bernius and Michael Sanderling and contributed to numerous concert recordings, broadcast productions, and simulcasts (HR, SWR, WDR, RBB, RAI, Radio de la Suisse Romande and Swiss Radio DRS).
She is a scholar of the Händel Academy Karlsruhe opera course (2002), of the Richard-Wagner-Association (2004) as well as the Steans Institute for Young Artists,
Ravinia Festival in Chicago/USA.

Anette Fischer-Lichdi was born in Bad Rappenau, Germany. She studied piano at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts with Robert Benz, Ulrich Eisenlohr and Heike-Dorothee Allardt and Irwin Gage. Important artistic impulses came from the master classes of Irwin Gage, Christoph Prégardien, Helmut Deutsch, Axel Bauni, Thérèse Dussaut, and Semjon Skigin.
She won second prize and special prize for best interpretation of a Schubert song at the International Competition "Franz Schubert and Modern Music" in Graz. Beside this, she was awarded First Prize at the Academic Competition for Schubert Songs in Mannheim, the prize for best piano accompaniment at the "Concorso di canto cameristico" in Gorizia (Italy) and at the 12th International Johannes Brahms Competition in Pörtschach (Carinthia/ Austria). She has been awarded with the federal prize of "Jugend musiziert" and in 2006 she became scholar of the Richard-Wagner-Association.
Recitals and concerts led the pianist all over Germany, to the International Kunstcampus deSingel in Antwerp, the Graz Congress Hall Stefaniensaal, as well as to France, Italy, and Hungary. She performed at the Klavierfestival Ruhr, the music festival "The Next Generation III" and the chamber music festival "Schubert – les 12 derniers mois" in Lausanne, where her recital with Caroline Melzer was broadcasted live by Radio de la Suisse Romande. As soloist she played piano concertos by Mozart and Schostakowitsch with orchestras like the Georgisches Kammerorchester Ingolstadt and the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn.
Anette Fischer-Lichdi is repetiteur in master classes (Académie International d´Eté de Nice) and competitions (International Johannes Brahms Competition). Since April 2007 she works as teacher for vocal repetition at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts.

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Caroline Melzer Soprano Anette Fischer-Lichdi Piano "Frauenliebe und -leben" CLCL 113
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 – 1856) „Frauenliebe und -leben" op. 42 nach Gedichten von Adalbert von Chamisso
Seit ich ihn gesehen Er, der Herrlichste von allen Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben Du Ring an meinem Finger Helft mir, ihr Schwestern Süßer Freund An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan	02:20 03:03 01:45 02:46 01:58 04:48 01:27 03:56
SERGEJ PROKOFIEFF (1891 – 1953) Fünf Romanzen op. 27 – Liederzyklus nach Anna Achmatowa
Die Sonne füllte das Zimmer Echte Zärtlichkeit Erinnerung an die Sonne Grüße Der grauäugige König	01:11 01:30 02:32 01:43 03:37
STEFAN HEUCKE (1959) „Sieben Lieder vom Tod" op. 52 für Gesang und Klavier nach Gedichten von Hertha Kräftner
I. "ANNA", sagte der Mann. II. Das Gesicht meines toten Vaters III. Wer glaubt noch IV. Kleine Chronik V. Auf den Tod eines Dichters VI. Die Eltern im Herbst VII. Dorfabend	06:04 01:42 02:57 04:52 04:46 04:51 02:44
total 43:36
* First recording
Stefan Heucke (*1959 Gaildorf, Germany) received his musical education at the Academies of Music in Stuttgart and Dortmund by Renate Werner, Arnulf von Arnim (piano) and Gerhart Schäfer (composition) from 1978 to 1986. He aroused first public interest through the premiere of his "Vier Orchesterstücke op. 5" performed by the Saarländische Staatsorchester and conducted by Matthias Kuntzsch. Afterwards, many national and international performances and radio productions with famous soloists and orchestras followed. In 2006 he finished his second musical theatre work "Das Frauenorchester von Auschwitz" (The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz), that premiered at the Theater Krefeld / Mönchengladbach in 2006. From 1989 to 2002 Stefan Heucke taught composition at the Academy of Music Detmold, Department Dortmund. In 1990 he was awarded the Young Artist Award of the City of Dortmund, 2002 he won the audience award at the "Windrose" Festival of the Ruhr Orchestras. Numerous requests by theatres, orchestras, ensembles, foundations and private persons as well as two scholarships of the Werner Richard - Dr. Carl Dörken-Foundation permitted him to exist as freelance composer. In the autumn of 2007 Stefan Heucke, who has been living in Bochum since 1996, was awarded the Hans-Werner-Henze-Prize of Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. Heucke’s works are published at Schott Music. Radio recordings and audio productions document his manifold oeuvre. The CD "Heimat" with works bei Leoš Janácek and Stefan Heucke has been released by CC ClassicClips (Marko Kassl, accordion and Tobias Bredohl, piano; CLCL 107)

Herha Kräftner, a nearly unknown poet in Germany, together with Ingeborg Bachmann belonged to the great talents of Austrian postwar literature. She committed suicide at the age of 23 and left only 50 poems, prose sketches, fragments of a novel, some diary entries and letters. Yet, this small oeuvre, published by the Pen Club Burgenland, ensured her an esoteric posthumous fame.

About 25 years ago I discovered her poem "Dorfabend". The poem’s murmur and cir cling carved itself deep into my head. Hertha Kräftner’s lyric work became an important discovery for me and in only a short time I found six more poems, which I added to "Dorfabend", thereby forming a cycle. The compositional accomplishment came in 2006 when the International Brahms Competition held in Pörtschach asked that I provide a compulsory piece for voice. In November 2008 the whole Kräftner Cycle was premiered by Caroline Melzer (soprano) and Anette Fischer-Lichdi (piano) in deSingel Antwerp – in the 2007 and 2008 competitions the songs One, Two, Four and Six had been compulsory. Almost inevitably the combination of my new cycle with Prokofieff’s Achmatowa songs and Schumann’s "Frauenliebe und -leben" arose. All three cycles are composed by men, but they deal with situations in women’s lives; for his famous song cycle op. 42 Schumann moreover used the poems of a man, Adalbert von Chamisso. So the role of the woman was at least partly described from a man’s perspective.
With respect to Schumann’s composition, it becomes clear how unwanted the male role dictate may be. In cycle order, eight songs tell the life and love story of a woman who traditionally finds gratification as lover, wife, mother and widow. In 1840, Schumann dedicated this cycle to his newly wed wife Clara who – by all accounts – never really accepted this role and later – after his death – chose a completely different self-concept: She became a liberated, prominent woman who supported herself and her children as a
touring piano virtuoso and later as a piano professor in Frankfurt.

In 1916 Sergej Prokofieff set five poems by Anna Achmatowa to music. The op. 27 cycle, rather than actually telling it, hints at a very similar story of unfortunate love, abandonment, and finally the view into the eyes of the illegitimate child. In contrast to Schumann’s dramatic, pianisticly exuberant and motivicly worked out song style, here extremely reduced parts, like being drawn by a Chinese paintbrush, accompany the declamatory vocal parts and vividly intensify the atmosphere of each song.

My cycle "Sieben Lieder vom Tod" op. 52 finally does not tell a story but examins the aspects of a woman’s struggel with death. With respect to composition it rather connects to the German tradition of the motivic work and the developing variation – and therefore to Schumann. The poet’s greatest trauma, the death of her father when she was sixteen, is depicted in the first song. You only have to replace "Anna" by "Hertha" and you become silent witness to the farewell talks of father and daughter. The central themes of her piece – the dead father and the ever rolling train – appear in songs Two and Six
while the middle group of songs approaches the subject of death and the failure of love in an estrangingly cool, nearly sarcastic way, nevertheless expressing the existential horror of the finality of eternal nothingness. The last song changes the situation of the first song: It is not a child saying goodbye to the father but a mother is seeing off her dead child that she probably had strangled to death out of material distress and that she is now burying with the "old Magdalen" ("der alten Magdalen"). Her sigh "God have mercy on us" ("Gott hab mit uns Erbarmen") concludes the piece and thus forms a headline a posteriori for the whole cycle – and ultimately our human existence.

Stefan Heucke