Posted in Classical, Going to Sleep, Lieder on Oct 6th, 2008 No Comments »
I am offering this as part of my ‘Going to Sleep’ anthology and as a supplement to my earlier post in tribute to the late Bernadette Greevy. Here she is singing the most famous of all lullabies. It is simply and beautifully done.
The pianist is Paul Hamburger.
Posted in Classical, Going to Sleep, Lieder on Sep 29th, 2008 No Comments »
One of the most famous of all lullabies - Schubert’s ‘Wiegenlied’, written in 1816 after an anonymous poem.
‘Sleep in her lap, soft as down, as love’s pure notes echo still around you. After sleep, a lily, a rose, shall be yours.’
The singer is Irmgard Seefried.
Posted in Classical, Going to Sleep, Lieder on Sep 19th, 2008 2 Comments »
This is one of two great settings (the other is Schubert’s) of this shortest of Goethe’s poems. He wrote it as a young man on a walking tour and inscribed it on the wall of a mountain hut where he slept the night. Then the words carried the sense of soft repose after a day of healthy exercise. Returning many years later as an old man, to look again on the words he had left there, they must have taken on quite another connotation.
Peace lies over all the hills; in the treetops there is barely a stir. Birds are hushed in the wood; wait just a little while, soon you too will be at rest.
I heard this sung by Dame Margaret Price at a concert at London’s Wigmore Hall on 1 February 1995. She sung it as an encore, in memory of Geoffrey Parsons, the great accompanist, who had died the previous week.
Here it is sung, most beautifully, by Christine Schafer, accompanied by Graham Johnson.
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Sep 4th, 2008 No Comments »
One of my favourite Schubert songs, The Pigeon Post from Schwanengesang, and almost the last he ever composed (only The Shepherd on the Rock to come). It is a jolly song for one so close to death and a tribute to Schubert’s tenacious grip on life. It is sung here by Christian Gerhaher, from a concert I was at at Wigmore Hall, London on 22 October 2001. Gerhaher was taught by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the great German baritone - and it shows in the echo of the great man’s phrasing you can hear in Gerhaher’s performance, and lovely voice. The pianist is Gerold Huber.
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Aug 12th, 2008 1 Comment »
My favourite Mozart song, sung at a concert I went to at Wigmore Hall, London, on 3 October 1995. The singer is Rose Mannion, with Julius Drake at the piano. She sings it beautifully. There’s a period of catarrhal coughing from the audience beforehand, which mercifully shuts up when Rose starts to sing.
‘Smiling, contentment rests upon my soul……you have come bound in sweet chains to my heart’
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Aug 5th, 2008 No Comments »
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was one of the most intelligent and thoughtful sopranos of the twentieth century. He voice wasn’t large but it had a mature sweetness and a melting quality that made it uniquely adapted to the music of the romantic composers, notably Richard Strauss. She was concerned with vocal quality but even more so about words, and the drama in the song. She was one of the great lieder singers. There were times, perhaps, later on, when her art occasionally tipped over into artfulness, a little self-regarding. But here she is at her finest. Singing Schumann’s Der Nussbaum at a concert in Carnegie Hall in November 1956. Particularly impressive is how, in the last verse, her voice withdraws as she becomes the young woman sinking back under the nut tree into her dream of him. The pianist is George Reeves.
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Jul 11th, 2008 4 Comments »
Wigmore Hall used to run lunchtime concerts where new young musical talent got the opportunity to perform in public. Entrance fee was nominal, and the audience would normally be not much more than a hundred including Mums and Dads and the rest of the family.
In April 1993 I strayed in during a damp lunch hour. The concert started with a chamber group of young instrumentalists. Their first piece was a new modern work – all squeaks and bumps and farts and sounds of scraping wire – and no worse than others I had “listened” to by more eminent figures, such as Pierre Boulez. They also did the Siegfried Idyll – a lovely, gentle piece belying Wagner’s image as bombastic and overbearing. In between there was a young singer, a tenor. He was thin and a little gaunt, angular, all knees and elbows. He sang Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”. I have the image of him now, in my mind’s eye, body thrust forward, singing full of passion, without inhibition, lovely clear voice, especially at the top (a touch weaker at the baritone end of things in the last song). There was something so utterly English about him; almost innocence. His hands and arms seemed to move involuntarily with his singing, as part of its expressiveness. It was forceful and vigorous. It was Ian Bostridge’s debut. Several weeks later I was flicking through the channels on the wireless and, by chance, came across a commercial music station, which usually played Easy Listening, broadcasting the very lunchtime concert I had been to at Wigmore Hall. I taped it. Here, from my tape, is Ian Bostridge singing the third song in the cycle “Ich hab ein gluhend Messer in meiner Brust”.
Several weeks later I was flicking through the channels on the wireless and, by chance, came across a commercial music station, which usually played Easy Listening, broadcasting the very lunchtime concert I had been to at Wigmore Hall. I taped it. Here, from my tape, is Ian Bostridge singing the third song in the cycle “Ich hab ein gluhend Messer in meiner Brust”.
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Jul 2nd, 2008 No Comments »
In my other blog here I wrote a piece about Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs”. “Im Abendrot” is the last song in the series, and the last song Richard Strauss wrote before he died. It’s a meditation on death, and sunset with the image of two larks fluttering upwards, like to souls floating up to heaven.
The benchmark against which all recordings of these songs is measured is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s 1966 recording with George Szell. It’s a classic. But there are other good versions – by Lisa della Casa and Gundula Janovitz, to name two. There is one other recording that does not suffer in comparison with Schwarzkopf’s. It is by Jessye Norman, with Kurt Masur.
In the first song, “Fruhling”, Norman’s voice seems large for the song and not quite gentle enough. But in “September” she draws into herself, in an interpretation of soft introspection. She sings from within the strings, as if from inside herself, retiring so gently at the end like a sigh. In the second “Beim Schlafengehen” there is a quite magical passage where, after the lovely violin interlude, she follows the line of the melody in almost imperceptible gradations, starting pianissimo then drawing her voice out into a crescendo, then retreating into head voice before building up the crescendo.
Her singing of the final “Im Abendrot” is achingly true to the music and the poetry. She captures perfectly the sense of sad regret of the first three verses. But when she sings the line ‘So tief im Abendrot” from the last verse the effect is magical. Her voice soars and swells heavenwards in a moment of pure ecstasy, and superb control. As if she is the angel waiting to welcome him at the gates of heaven. And in the fluttering upwards of the larks to heaven the song ends.
Here is a fine translation of the song by Ivan Grosz which he posted as a comment on my original post.
Twilight
We have gone through joy and sorrow
Walking hand in hand
Let’s rest from all the wanderings
Here, on this silent land
The valleys slip beneath us
The air is turning dark
Up into the balmy sky
Dreaming soar two larks
Come close to me and let them twirl
It’s almost time to sleep
Be careful not to lose our way
The solitude is deep
Oh broad and peaceful silence
Set in the evening’s dark red glow
Of wandering we are tired
May death be waiting for us now?
Posted in Classical, Lieder on Jun 30th, 2008 2 Comments »
“Die junge Nonne” is one of Schubert’s greatest songs. I have written an appreciation of it here.
Margaret Price’s recording of this song is of the very highest quality, superbly accompanied by Graham Johnson.
Posted in Classical, Going to Sleep, Lieder on Jun 30th, 2008 2 Comments »
“Schlafendes Jesuskind” is the most approachable of Hugo Wolf’s songs. It’s a settng of a Morike poem about the sleeping Christchild.
I came to Wolf late - not really getting to grips with his declamatory style. And the orchestral versions of some of his songs made approaching them easier for me. The first time I heard this song was at a concert in November 1981, where the songs were shared between John Shirley-Quirk and Elizabeth Connell, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Ferdinand Leitner.
Here is Elizabeth Connell singing “Schlafendes Jesuskind”. I love the way she floats the word “Himmelskind” at the end.
The song starts 20 seconds in, after audience rustling and settling.
Here are the words.
Schlafendes Jesuskind
Sohn der Jungfrau, Himmelskind! am Boden,
Auf dem Holz der Schmerzen eingeschlafen,
Das der fromme Meister, sinnvoll spielend,
Deinen leichten Träumen unterlegte;
Blume du, noch in der Knospe dämmernd
Eingehüllt die Herrlichkeit des Vaters!
O wer sehen könnte, welche Bilder
Hinter dieser Stirne, diesen schwarzen
Wimpern sich in sanftem Wechsel malen!
Sohn der Jungfrau, Himmelskind!
Sleeping Christchild
Son of the Virgin, child of Heaven, lying on the floor
asleep on the wood of suffering
that the pious painter has placed -
a meaningful allusion - under your light dreams;
You flower, even in the bud, darkling and sheathed,
still the glory of God the Father!
O, who could see,
behind this brow, these dark lashes,
what softly-changing pictures are being painted!
Son of the Virgin, child of Heaven!
| ||
