Jamina Gerl, Piano

Wandering is not only the joy of the miller striding easily through the world. Wandering reflects a heavyweight archetype of Romantic motion and anguish; longing for the far-away beloved, the rootlessness of the lonely, the lost. Franz Schubert decisively shaped this image, particularly in his famous cycle after Wilhelm Müller's Die Winterreise. The first line of the lied has become, as it were, iconic of the Romantic awareness of life and suffering: »A stranger I arrived here, a stranger I go hence.« Schubert also dealt with this central subject of his times in his "Wanderer Fantasy". He borrowed this work from the German poet Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck. On his journey, Schmidt's wanderer traverses roaring seas and steaming valleys in his eternal search for a place he belongs, for home. The futility of this search ends with the words: »Where you are not, there's happiness.«
The “Wanderer Fantasy” is the theoretical starting point and crowning work of this recording, which, however, also thoughtfully looks at the atmospherically light side of Romantic wandering. The program thus firmly leads from the famous wanderer of the educated classes, Felix Mendelssohn, and his journey through Scotland to colorful musical atmospheric images by composers from Liszt to Debussy. They tell of forests, the world of gnomes and sprites, and of fantastical and exotic dances. Venetian gondola songs then segue from dry land onto the water and guide us on the winding bends of the 'Grand Canal' all the way to the 'L'Isle joyeuse', that island of joy regarded as the kingdom of love and bliss.

Concerts in Germany and abroad have always earned the young German pianist Jamina Gerl excellent reviews from professional critics. For instance, the press in New York declared her orchestral debut performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto "a triumph for all concerned," christening Gerl "a lioness of the keyboard."
In addition to her versatile concert programs, she is often praised for her poetically inspired piano playing, remarkable virtuosity and richly shaded, differentiated expression. Concerts and numerous competition triumphs (e.g. first prize at the 2013 International Shining Stars Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Competition in New York) resulted in her appearing in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and the Steinway Hall in New York, the Beethoven Haus Chamber Music Hall, the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Mannes College Concert Hall, Tonhalle Dusseldorf and Munetsugu Hall Nagoya.

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