Schumann & Brahms

b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 1 Christiane Karg Malcolm Martineau Schumann & Brahms b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 2 chRiStiane KaRg soprano malcolm maRtineau piano Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 18 November 2014 RobeRt Schumann (1810–1856) 01 Widmung Op. 25 No. 1 02.17 claRa Schumann (1819–1896) 02 Er ist gekommen Op. 12 No. 2 02.28 03 Liebeszauber Op. 13 No. 3 02.17 04 Sie liebten sich beide Op. 13 No. 2 01.59 05 Liebst du um Schönheit Op. 12 No. 4 02.05 RobeRt Schumann Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42 21.33 06 Seit ich ihn gesehen 02.14 07 Er, der Herrlichste von allen 03.07 08 Ich kann’s nicht fassen 01.37 09 Du Ring an meinem Finger 02.37 10 Helft mir, ihr Schwestern 01.52 11 Süßer Freund, du blickest 04.29 12 An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust 01.10 13 Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan 03.59 RobeRt Schumann 14 Die Löwenbraut Op. 31 No. 1 07.36 2 b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 3 JohanneS bRahmS (1833–1897) 15 Von ewiger Liebe Op. 43 No. 1 04.16 16 Auf dem See Op. 59 No. 2 02.44 17 Meine Liebe ist grün Op. 63 No. 5 01.31 18 O kühler Wald Op. 72 No. 3 01.46 19 Lerchengesang Op. 70 No. 2 02.21 20 Wir wandelten Op. 96 No. 2 02.50 21 Feldeinsamkeit Op. 86 No. 2 02.59 22 Mondnacht WoO. 21 02.18 Total time: 64.51 www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/live 3 b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 4 ChRiStiane KaRg SingS SChumann and BRahmS The Schumanns and Brahms had what can only friendship for the rest of their lives – Brahms be described as a unique relationship. Robert and arguably never really recovered with Clara a Clara had been welded together through years of constant and not uncritical commentator on his struggle, as they tried to convince Clara’s father, music (along with Joseph Joachim, the man Friedrich Wieck, that Robert was a suitable partner who had first introduced them). This is the for his cherished daughter. When they were finally emotional backdrop to the songs featured in this free to marry, Robert dedicated a year of com - programme. position to songs celebrating their union (as well As Clara’s 21st birthday approached, Robert as foretelling the rocky emotional road ahead). Schumann knew that she would be able to break Clara, meanwhile, pursued her career as a concert away from her father and they could, at last, pianist and as a composer, writing a number of marry. Schumann busied himself with writing a Lieder of her own. wedding present, Myrten, one of his first cycles, The pair took the young Brahms under their featuring poems by Rückert, Goethe, Mosen, wing in the early 1850s. It was as if he had ‘sprung Burns, Heine, Willemer, Byron, Fanshawe and like Minerva fully armed from the head of the son Moore. The work opens with the stirring of Cronus’, Robert wrote in an acclamatory article ‘Widmung’, containing at its core the words in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Brahms, having ‘Du bist die Ruh’, which Schubert had made studied Robert’s music (though not Clara’s as so famous. This section of the poem prompts yet), presented himself at the Schumanns’ home, a remarkable modulation from A flat major to quickly securing a place within their influential E major, mirrored in a shift in the accompaniment circle. When Robert’s mental condition began from swelling quavers to thrumming triplets. The to worsen, with his nervous breakdown, suicide song closes with a return to the tonic and a attempt and prompt removal to the sanatorium restatement of the opening words (now without at Endenich, Brahms moved into the Schumann mention of the grave). family home, becoming in loco parentis and Clara Schumann wrote her own series of assisting Clara with domestic life in general. It was settings of Rückert in 1841, published together not long before he developed a serious passion with Robert’s as Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts for her, which she reciprocated with a protective Liebesfrühling – the poet had written Liebes - motherly care, drawing strength from Brahms’s frühling when he was courting his own wife. Clara presence in her life. Robert died in 1856, leaving matches the stirring ‘dedication’ of the opening of both Clara and Brahms bereft. But if his death Robert’s Myrten with her own vivid description of promised the pair union at last, it was not to be. the storm and rain from which the lover appears. They maintained a close and hugely amicable No less animated is ‘Liebeszauber’, a setting of 4 b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 5 words by Emanuel von Geibl, published along with ‘Sie liebten sich beide’ in 1844. Heine’s poem reverses the security of the previous songs, eliciting particularly touching harmonies, with the piano providing psychologically acute postludes after each two-line statement. Rückert’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’, made famous by Mahler, establishes heartfelt confidence in Clara’s song, accompanied by chains of rolling quavers. Perhaps Robert’s most famous musical en - capsulation of his marriage to Clara is to be found in the July 1840 cycle Frauenliebe und -leben. Poet Adelbert von Chamisso was born Louis Charles Adélaïde, Vicomte de Chamisso, before his family fled the French Revolution and moved to Prussia. His poems on ‘a woman’s love and life’ were written shortly after he had married a much younger girl. Some have criticised the seemingly misogynist tones of Chamisso’s text, though the poet was a fervent liberal and particularly in favour of female emancipation. Rather, the poems are deliberately naïve, guilty only of patronising a girl from a lower social class, nonetheless giving ROBERT SCHuMANN her a (for then) rare chance to express her feelings A lithograph by Josef Kriehuber ‘in public’. Written shortly after the neurotic Dichterliebe, house in which she is working. Despite the this is a contrastingly uncomplicated work. It difference in rank and class, he has declared his opens with ‘Seit ich ihn gesehen’, with its gentle love by the time we reach ‘Ich kann’s nicht hesitations and vivid impression of the beloved fassen’, and so follows the engagement in ‘Du ‘rising out of deepest darkness’. Having arrived Ring an meinem Finger’, with the piano and voice (though not yet requited her feelings), the lover beautifully wedded to each other and becoming inspires the starry-eyed harmonies of ‘Er, der more fervent as the song progresses. Herrlichste von allen’, with the piano’s miniature The dotted rhythm at the end of each accom - fanfares perhaps indicating the master of the panying phrase in ‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’ 5 b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 6 recalls ‘Widmung’ from Myrten, as the young bride prepares to ‘dedicate’ herself to her husband. ‘Süßer Freund, du blickest’ is the most affecting song in the cycle, where truly rapt love is mirrored in the slow pace of the piano accompaniment and the tender tumble of the vocal line. The wife reveals that she is pregnant and the husband is rendered speechless, accompanied by the simplest but most eloquent three-bar interlude. ‘An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust’ sees the young child on his mother’s knee, with the compound duple metre hinting at a lullaby. The D major of that cradle scene, however, turns to D minor at the beginning of ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan’, as we realise that the husband has died, provoking music of great anguish, before the piano recalls the first song and offers a lasting memento mori. Around the same time that he completed Frauenliebe und -leben Schumann set Chamisso’s ‘Die Löwenbraut’, a bizarre ballad telling the story of a seemingly anthropomorphised lion who changes back to wild beast and devours his keeper’s daughter, leaving her ‘bleeding and mangled in the dust’. Schumann brings a genuine JOHANNES BRAHMS dose of melancholy to this otherwise mawkish text, not least the sweet modulation to the major The story of Romantic Lieder resumes with as the young girl tells ‘the powerful beast’ that Johannes Brahms, who began composing songs ‘those days of childhood’ when they were friends in the early 1850s. Some, including settings of ‘are long since gone’. Most impressive, however, Eichendorff, Geibel, Chamisso and Heine, show a is the slow, tense tempo of the song, becoming clear line between Brahms and the Schumanns, gradually wilder as the lion reveals his true nature, though these were largely suppressed by the before collapsing in grief and then death, leaving highly self-critical and, in his youth, self-doubting the piano to close the book on this strange tale. Brahms. We begin, then, with ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, 6 b0084_WH booklet template.qxd 19/08/2016 22:19 Page 7 written in 1864 and published four years later as 1877. If the text promises little in the way of part of Vier Gesänge. It sets a traditional Wendish originality, Brahms raises it to great heights, with text translated into German by Hoffmann von the song’s pregnant pauses, rich chromaticisms Fallersleben. The folk origins of the poem inspire and revelatory modulations. Echoes of the forest the modalities of Brahms’s flowing accompani - come back to Brahms in the ‘ethereal distant ment, in which constant variation and increasing voices’ of ‘Lerchengesang’, composed the same chromaticism heightens the emotions, as does year, before recollections of a different kind per - the quickening tempo, not least in the passages of meate ‘Wir wandelten’ from 1885.

Load more