MARK PADMORE TENOR PAUL LEWIS PIANO DENVER JANUARY 16, 2019 JOHANNES BRAHMS Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze, Op. 71, no. 1 (1833-1897) Sommerabend, Op. 85, no. 1 Mondenschein, Op. 85, no. 2 Es schauen die Blumen alle, Op. 96, no. 3 Meerfahrt, Op. 96, no. 4 Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, Op. 96, no. 1 GUSTAV MAHLER Rückert-Lieder (1860-1911) Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft Liebst du um Schönheit Um Mitternacht Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen INTERMISSION ROBERT Dichterliebe SCHUMANN 1. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (1810-1856) 2. Aus meinin Tränen sprießen 3. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne 4. Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ 4a. Dein Angesicht so lieb und schön 4b. Lehn deine Wang’ 5. Ich will meine Seele tauchen 6. Im Rhein, I heiligen Strome 7. Ich grolle nicht 8. Und wüssten’s die Blumen 9. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen 10. Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen 11. Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen 12. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen 12a. Es leuchtet meine Liebe 12b. Mein Wagen rollet langsam 13. Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet 14. Allnächtlich im Träume 15. Aus alten Märche winkt es 16. Die alten bösen Lieder MARK PADMORE, TENOR Mark Padmore has established an international career in opera, concert, and recital. His appearances in Bach Passions have gained particular notice, especially his renowned performances as the Evangelist in the St Matthew and St John Passions with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle. In opera Padmore had leading roles in Harrison Birtwistle’s The Corridor and The Cure at the Aldeburgh Festival and Linbury Theatre, Covent Garden; Captain Vere in Britten's Billy Budd and the Evangelist in a staging of the MARK PADMORE St Matthew Passion for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera; tenor Third Angel/John in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Recent projects have included the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s Cave with the London Sinfonietta. Future opera plans include a new Royal Opera House production of Death in Venice. In addition to performing with the world’s leading orchestras, Padmore was named Artist in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2017-18 season. His work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, exploring both Bach St John and St Matthew Passions, attracted worldwide acclaim. In recitals worldwide, Padmore has performed all three Schubert song cycles in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, and New York. Composers who have written for him include Sally Beamish, Harrison Birtwistle, Jonathan Dove, Thomas Larcher, Nico Muhly, Alec Roth, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Huw Watkins, Ryan Wigglesworth, and Hans Zender. His extensive discography includes recent releases: Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on BR Klassik, and lieder by Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart with Kristian Bezuidenhout for Harmonia Mundi. Other Harmonia Mundi recordings include Handel’s arias As Steals the Morn with the English Concert (BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award); Winterreise Schubert cycles with Paul Lewis (2010 Gramophone magazine Vocal Award); Schumann’s Dichterliebe with Kristian Bezuidenhout (2011 Edison Klassiek Award) and Britten’s Serenade, Nocturne and Finzi’s Dies Natalis with the Britten Sinfonia (ECHO/Klassik 2013 award). Padmore was voted 2016 Vocalist of the Year by Musical America and awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Kent University in 2014. He is Artistic Director of the St. Endellion Summer Music Festival in Cornwall. PAUL LEWIS, PIANO Paul Lewis is internationally regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation. His cycles of core piano works by Beethoven and Schubert have received critical acclaim worldwide. His numerous awards have included the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year, two Edison awards, three Gramophone awards, the Diapason D’or de l’Année, the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, and the South Bank Show Classical Music award. PAUL LEWIS Lewis’s recital career takes him to venues such as London’s Royal Festival Hall, Alice Tully and Carnegie Hall in New piano York, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Berlin Philharmonie and Konzerthaus. He is also a frequent guest at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals, including Tanglewood, Ravinia, Schubertiade, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Lucerne, and the BBC Proms, where in 2010 he became the first person to play a complete Beethoven piano concerto cycle in a single season. The 2017-18 season saw the start of a two-year recital series exploring connections between the sonatas of Haydn, the late piano works of Brahms, and Beethoven’s Bagatelles and Diabelli Variations, which Lewis is continuing through the 2018-19 season. friendsofchambermusic.com 1 His award winning discography for Harmonia Mundi includes the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, concertos, and the Diabelli Variations, Liszt’s B minor Sonata and other late works, all of Schubert’s major piano works from the last six years of his life, including the three song cycles with tenor Mark Padmore, solo works by Schumann and Mussorgsky, and the Brahms D minor piano concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding. Lewis studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and later with Alfred Brendel. He holds honorary degrees from Liverpool, Edge Hill, and Southampton Universities, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours. He is co-Artistic Director of Midsummer Music, an annual chamber music festival held in Buckinghamshire, UK, and the Leeds International Piano Competition. NOTES Program Notes © Elizabeth Bergman ES LIEBT SICH SO The two songs from Opus 85 date to the middle of Brahms’s career, when he had established his reputation— LIEBLICH IM LENZE, thanks in part to Schumann’s ardent support—as an OP. 71, NO. 1 accomplished composer. “Sommerabend” (“Summer SOMMERABEND Evening”) pairs well with “Mondenschein” (“Moonlight”) because the outer sections of the first song and the middle OP. 85, NO. 1 of the second involve the same melody and counter- MONDENSCHEIN melody. The accompaniment of “Summer Evening” OP. 85, NO. 2 suggests chirping crickets and splashing water. The music also invokes breathing, enhancing the mild eros of the text, which refers to moonlight, a traveler, and a water nymph. The second song dispenses with the traveler and the nymph but maintains the moonlight, changing the symbolism from sensual to soothing as the beams dispel fears and fill the eyes of the poetic subject with tears. The earlier song “Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze” (“So Lovely Is Love in Spring”) sets a text by Heinrich Heine, Schumann’s favorite poet. It begins gently before turning grim with a shepherdess weaving flowers, a knight who was 2 friendsofchambermusic.com once her lover, and the song of a nightingale—a familiar ES SCHAUEN DIE Romantic symbol of heartbreak. The music is pictorial and BLUMEN ALLE, painterly, suggesting both the galloping of the knight’s OP. 96, NO. 3 horse and the tossing of the flowers into a river. Heine’s, and perhaps Brahms’s, delight at the springtime eruption of MEERFAHRT OP. 96, emotion is also manifest in the bright major key at the end. NO. 4 The first two songs from Opus 96, again set to a text by DER TOD, DAS IST Heine, speak of love as well as loss. The first describes the DIE KÜHLE NACHT, sun and sea but has a dark lining—a sense of transience, OP. 96, NO. 1 decay, and disintegration captured in the almost panicked introduction. The poetic subject expresses hope for love, represented by Brahms in a vocal ascent. That hope is thwarted, however, in the final F-sharp pitch, held high and aloft before seeming to melt into the mist. The second song from Opus 96 has a nautical subject, captured by Brahms with the grand sweep in the piano introduction. The text tells of a pair of lovers in a helpless situation. The music bitterly and ironically suggests a blissful oasis or safe harbor. A mournful horn call, however, speaks of loss. “Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,” Op. 96, no.1 (“Death is the Cool Night”) welcomes death as a respite from the heat of life. The pulsing accompaniment evokes a slowing heartbeat. Warmer, brighter moments recall the warmth of the day and so suggest that love, unlike the light, remains undying. The oldest of six surviving children born to a tavern-owner GUSTAV MAHLER, in what is now the Czech Republic, Gustav Mahler was largely self-taught as a musician until the age of 15, when RÜCKERT LIEDER he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. But his true ambition was to be a conductor, and he composed only part-time, during the summers. His first stint as a conductor came in 1880 at a small, underfunded summer theater, but he parlayed the experience into a better position the following year in Ljubljana, the present-day capital of Slovenia. Slowly he won ever more prestigious postings in Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, and Hamburg before landing the job he coveted, in 1897, at the Vienna Opera. His Rückert Lieder date to 1901 when Mahler was at the height of his creative powers. The songs set texts by Friedrich Rückert, a professor of East Asian studies and poet, who produced a group of German lyric poems that friendsofchambermusic.com 3 Program Notes appealed to Mahler.