Soprano Claudia Barainsky is a skillful interpreter of 20th and 21st century music, both in performance and on recordings. Her repertory also includes mainstream works in German and Italian, stretching back as far as Handel. Barainsky's recording catalog inclines heavily toward modern and contemporary works. In 2024, she released the album Im wachen Traume on the contemporary-oriented ECM label. Barainsky was born on September 30, 1965, in West Berlin and was raised there. She attended the city's Hochschule der Künste, studying with Ingrid Figur, and went on to take master classics with baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the composer Aribert Reimann. Barainsky became a strong draw at German festivals quite early in her career, appearing at such events as the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, the Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden, and the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker. In 1993, Barainsky made her operatic debut as Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Stadttheater Bern in Switzerland. Other early parts were the title roles in Alban Berg's Lulu in Bern and in Reimann's Melusine at the Semperoper Dresden. Barainsky made her recording debut on the Orfeo label in 1995 with an album of Anton Webern lieder. Barainsky has appeared at major opera houses in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Tokyo, among other cities. She has performed several Wagnerian roles at the composer's Bayreuth Opera House in Bavaria, including the First Flower Girl in Parsifal and Waldvogel in Siegfried. Barainsky is an important Handel soprano who has appeared at the Handel Festival Karlsruhe. She is especially well known in contemporary works, having appeared in several operas by Reimann, including the title role in his Medea at the Frankfurt Opera in 2010. She was the dedicatee of his Tarde, for soprano and orchestra. Barainsky's recorded output also emphasizes 20th century and contemporary music. She has recorded for Orfeo, issuing an album of Prokofiev songs in 2003, MDG, and Oehms Classics, among other prestigious boutique German labels. She moved to the Dux label in 2020 for an album of works by Krzysztof Meyer and to Chandos that same year for an appearance on the album Music of Israel: Paul Ben-Haim. In 2024, Barainsky was heard with the Delian Quartett, a group with which she has collaborated several times, on the recital Im wachen Traume. ~ James Manheim, Rovi