Tag: song
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PROGRAM NOTES: SIR SIMON KEENLYSIDE
Johannes Brahms Songs from Opp. 6, 72, 86 & 96 It may be surprising to learn that while Brahms is universally revered as a giant of 19th-century instrumental music, he is often listed as one of the lesser composers of 19th-century art song. This may be because the texts he chose to set were for…
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PROGRAM NOTES: TARA ERRAUGHT & JAMES BAILLIEU
Franz Liszt Victor Hugo Poems It may seem strange to think of Liszt as a song composer, so firmly is his name associated with 19th-century virtuoso pianism. But the extraordinary breadth of his musical sympathies is already clearly evident in the wide range of styles and moods in his piano compositions alone, from the bombast…
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PROGRAM NOTES: FLORIAN BOESCH AND MIAH PERSSON
The Songs of Robert Schumann Robert Schumann was a composer steeped in literature. His compositions bear the dual imprint of both German musical and literary Romanticism. Literature was the family business, one might say, as his father, August Schumann, was both a publisher and a bookseller in Zwickau, Saxony, where the composer grew up. He…
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PROGRAM NOTES: IAN BOSTRIDGE & WENWEN DU
Gustave Mahler Three Des Knaben Wunderhorn Songs The collection of German folk poetry published between 1805 and 1808 under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) had an enormous influence on the development of German lyric poetry and song in the 19th century, and the artless simplicity of these verses was particularly attractive…