For his first solo recording on CAVI, tenor Ilker Arcayrek has chosen Mahler's Lied cycle as the theme of his album, a journey through the recent Austro-Hungarian empire with songs of composers who lived or still live in this area.

"The International Art Song Competition held by the Hugo Wolf Academy in Stuttgart was the birthplace of this CD. During the competition, Fiona Pollak and I took a certain amount of musical risks and were ultimately rewarded with the First Prize, as well as with the opportunity to record this CD.

This recording features songs by composers from the period of the kaiserlich-und-kniglich Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary around the turn of the 20th century. We wanted to venture outside our comfort zone to discover as many different timbres and new songs as possible. We have selected composers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire of that time, including the region of Vojvodina, which is now part of Serbia.

Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer form this recording's dramatic nucleus.We found it fascinating to present this cycle in a rarely performed higher version for tenor. In our view, the Songs of a Wayfarer serve here as a prologue, a foreshadowing, and a summing up of the content you will encounter in the remaining songs on this CD. The wayfarer's story begins with Frhlingsmorgen, a morning in spring. In Franz Lhar's two songs he discovers love for the first time. However, he undergoes his first emotional transformation, associated with the first heartache, in Hugo Wolf's Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag' erhoben (The moon has raised a grave complaint). From there we wander into the Balkan mountain range, to the Vojvodina region on the Danube. In Elegie the wayfarer expresses his pain and sorrow. Along with the change of mood, the language changes, as well. It comes with the heartfelt yearning to turn back time." " 2019 Ilker Arcayrek