Song recital on September 25, 2022 at the Aurelium Lappersdorf

„Why is the program called „The Woman in Me“? That is the title of a song by Wolfgang Rihm and gives the concert its framework. I have always been interested in the tensions of our human existence. The ambivalent pulsation of life that contradicts the bourgeois demand for classification and pigeonholing.
The composers we have chosen for this program are and were people who dealt with great (apparent) contrasts and disruptions. Schumann, who divided what was torn in him as the wild and formal into „Florestan“ and „Eusebius“, Satie, who created pure, naive music, lived lonely and at the same time was a pianist in the Parisian cabaret „Chat noir“. Poulenc, an avowed Catholic and a self-confessed homosexual already in the 1920s. And Rihm, Germany’s most famous living composer with a soft spot for texts by schizophrenic authors such as Wölfli, Herbeck, Lenz, Nietzsche and Hölderlin.
The spiritual thing about art is: here these apparent opposites become one.“

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„Flexibility and colourfulness are the distinguishing features of the voice of baritone Holger Falk, one of the most internationally sought-after representatives of his field. Lied, oratorio, opera, everything interests him equally, but especially the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, because here he finds the most direct answer to his question: „What does a work have to do with myself?“ Nothing sounds accidental or unintentional with Holger Falk. „It is as if the texts bite deeper into the ear with every syllable, every note“ is the verdict of DIE ZEIT. Ines Pasz met Holger Falk in his home town of Frankfurt.“
Ines Pasz, SWR 2. broadcast on 17 July 2022, 3 p.m.

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Thinking back to last weeks intense and fulfilling performances of „Thomas“ by G.F.Haas/Händl Klaus. For a those who didn’t make it to see one of the shows here is the press:

„Haas demands an art of expression schooled in classical art song in the two central roles. The baritone Holger Falk sings the part of Thomas, left behind in life, hauntingly, expressively and subtly like a modern song cycle.“ (Abendzeitung München),

„Although doctors, nurses, corpse washers and a garishly eroticised funeral director break up Thomas‘ work of mourning through banal everyday life, none of them can compete with Holger Falk’s primal ego encapsulation. […] Moreover, the play concentrates on the protagonist, who is in constant action for an hour and a half. Which seems to be what really gets the sensitive berserker Holger Falk going. His Thomas cannot at all come to terms with the death of his beloved, he then imagines his resurrection in pain.“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Read more and

„‚Thomas‘ by Georg Friedrich Haas and Händl Klaus is carried above all by baritone Holger Falk. […] in its concentration on the singing, acting human being, on a chamber intensity, ‚Thomas‘ is also strong. Provided you have such an exceptional performer as Holger Falk. Falk translates the tenderness and condensed emotionality of Händl Klaus‘ verses into singing of the same quality. With a soft, smooth, effortlessly expanding baritone. With great clarity and – basically the ideal case – a speaking that naturally expands into singing.“ (Münchner Merkur)