Braunfels: Joan of Arc - Scenes from the Life of Saint Joan

Walter Braunfels is one of the composers whose music died twice. Once, when the Nazis declared his art "degenerate", and again when the "aesthetic paradigm shift" (Udo Zimmermann) after the Second World War pushed contemporary tonal music to the margins. The present release, the 10th publication of the 'Braunfels Edition' by Capriccio, highlights one of his most famous operatic works. What makes "Jeanne D'Arc" a remarkably effective music drama is not only its often lush post-Romantic musical language, but also Braunfels' own libretto. The story itself is well known: vision, liberation of Orleans, coronation of the Dauphin, arrest, inquisition trial, and finally death by burning. From the original 15th-century Latin and French trial documents, a touch of George Bernard Shaw ("Saint Joan"), and his own additions, Braunfels manages to bring this story and its protagonists back to life, despite the subject matter being so distant from our own time.