CHRISTOPH PRÉGARDIEN CYPRIEN KATSARIS Auf Flügeln Des Gesanges Romantic Songs and Piano Transcriptions

CHRISTOPH PRÉGARDIEN CYPRIEN KATSARIS Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Romantic songs and piano transcriptions 1 CHRISTOPH PRÉGARDIEN CYPRIEN KATSARIS Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Romantic songs and piano transcriptions FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) CLARA SCHUMANN [1] Die Forelle, Op. 32, D. 530 2:16 [9] 6 Lieder, Op. 23 3:31 FRANZ LISZT (1810-1886) No. 3: Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort [2] 6 Melodien von Franz Schubert, S. 563 3:02 FRANZ LISZT No. 6: Die Forelle (1st version) [10] Lieder von Robert und Clara Schumann, S. 569 2:26 No. 10: Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort FRANZ SCHUBERT [3] Schwanengesang, D. 957 2:46 FRANZ LISZT No. 1: Liebesbotschaft [11] Im Rhein, im schönen Strome (2nd version), S. 272 2:49 LEOPOLD GODOWSKY (1870-1938) [12] Buch der Lieder I, S. 531 2:17 [4] Transcription of Liebesbotschaft 3:31 No. 2: Im Rhein, im schönen Strome FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809-1847) RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883) [5] 6 Gesänge, Op. 34 2:53 [13] 5 Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Wesendonck-Lieder), WWV 91 4:28 No. 2: Auf Flügeln des Gesanges No. 5: Träume FRANZ LISZT AUGUST STRADAL (1860-1930) [6] Mendelssohns Lieder, S. 547 3:28 [14] Transcription of Träume 4:30 No. 1: Auf Flügeln des Gesanges HUGO WOLF (1860-1903) ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856) [15] Anakreons Grab 2:52 [7] Liederkreis, Op. 39 1:16 BRUNO HINZE-REINHOLD (1877-1964) No. 12: Frühlingsnacht [16] 10 Piano Pieces after Hugo Wolf Lieder 2:54 CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896) No. 6: Idylle after Anakreons Grab [8] 30 Lieder und Gesänge von Robert Schumann 1:18 No. 28: Frühlingsnacht 4 5 RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) JOHANNES BRAHMS [17] 5 Lieder, Op. 48 2:59 [25] 5 Lieder, Op. 49 1:54 No. 1: Freundliche Vision No. 4: Wiegenlied WALTER GIESEKING (1895-1956) GERALD MOORE (1899-1987) [18] Free arrangement of Freundliche Vision 3:07 [26] Transcription of Wiegenlied 2:26 THEODOR KIRCHNER (1823-1903) [19] 10 Lieder, Op. 1 1:53 total time 72:26 No. 4: Frühlingslied [20] 10 Klavierstücke nach eigenen Liedern, Op. 19 2:00 No. 10: Frühlingslied (In dem Walde sprießt und grünt es) JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) [21] 8 Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 59 2:45 No. 5: Agnes THEODOR KIRCHNER 2:43 [22] Transcription of Agnes JOHANNES BRAHMS [23] 5 Romanzen und Lieder, Op. 84 1:40 No. 4: Vergebliches Ständchen EDUARD SCHÜTT (1856-1933) [24] Paraphrase of Vergebliches Ständchen 4:29 6 7 Lieder recitals, so crucial to our musical life today, only began to come into their own in the early twentieth century. Before then audiences tended to prefer ‘individual blossoms’ of song to ‘entire garlands’, as one nineteenth- century Viennese critic archly put it after sitting through Winterreise. Mix- and-match programmes were the norm, with a singer typically sharing star billing with a solo pianist and/or a violinist. While a handful of famous singers sang Schubert’s songs in the concert hall, they reached a wider public largely through keyboard transcriptions. The trend was set by that passionate Schubert lover Franz Liszt, the most prolific and surely the greatest of all transcribers. Set in motion by the playful piano figuration evoking the leaping fish, the ever- popular Die Forelle is a parable of innocence betrayed. In the transcription the watery imagery becomes a cue for a modest display of Lisztian glitter, while the mini-drama in the final verse provokes some added chromaticism. But Liszt’s devotion to Schubert ensures that this is a sensitive reimagining of the original in pianistic terms. Equally faithful and unshowy are Liszt’s transcriptions of Clara Schumann’s Geheimes Flüstern, and Mendelssohn’s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, beloved of swooning sopranos in Victorian and Edwardian parlours. Ignoring the mockery of romantic fantasy in Heine’s verses, Mendelssohn created a seductive melody of exquisite poise above rippling, harp-like accompaniment. In Liszt’s hands it becomes a beguiling Song without Words. As in Die Forelle, he sets the melody first in the tenor register before transferring it to the treble. 8 9 Published in the sentimentally titled Schwanengesang collection, the delectable six songs Clara composed in 1853 to verses from the novel Jucunde by the Liebesbotschaft, with its magical, gliding modulations, is Schubert’s last Austrian writer Hermann Rollett. evocation of the rippling brook. Its diaphonous water music proved irresistible to Liszt. His transcription, though, is a model of self-denial alongside that of Next we have Liszt transcribing himself. His first setting of Heine’s Im Rhein, Leopold Godowsky, who published it with reworkings of eleven other Schubert im schönen Strome dates from 1840, the year Schumann set the same poem in songs in 1927. True to form, his Liebesbotschaft dissolves Schubert’s limpid Dichterliebe (changing ‘schönen’ to ‘heiligen’). Where Schumann immediately textures into a dazzling maze of polyphonic complexity. seizes on the image of Cologne Cathedral reflected in the Rhine, Liszt’s opening paints the cascading waters, à la Wagner. Characteristically, though, ‘My most romantic music ever, with much of you in it, dearest Clara’ was Liszt made the water figuration less showily virtuosic when he revised the song Schumann’s typically effusive verdict on the Eichendorff Liederkreis, Op. 39, in 1854 (the version sung here). There is a ravishing remote modulation to he composed in May 1840, during an enforced absence from his fiancée. suggest the picture’s radiance, and a delicate evocation of fluttering angels’ The cycle’s closing song, Frühlingsnacht is a shimmering vision of physical wings at ‘Es schweben Blumen und Engelein’. and spiritual elation. Its autobiographical significance for Schumann is self- evident. After their marriage in September 1840 Clara returned the compliment Liszt’s future son-in-law Richard Wagner had an uncanny knack of falling in by transcribing the song as a scintillating piano miniature. love with the wives of his patrons and champions. One of these was Mathilde, wife of the Zurich silk merchant Otto Wesendonck who provided the composer Whereas Gustav Mahler, married to the talented Alma Schindler, let it be and his wife Minna with a villa during their enforced exile from Germany. known that there was room for only one composer in the family, and it wasn’t It was here in 1857, while Wagner was working on Tristan und Isolde, that her, Robert was always encouraging Clara to compose. ‘Why not write a song? mutual attraction ripened into love. That autumn he began a set of five songs Once you’ve begun you just can’t stop!’, he urged her in March 1840. Clara was to poems by Mathilde written in imitation of Wagner’s hothouse Tristan manner. initially reluctant: ‘I have no talent for it. In order to write a song, to understand The composer created music to match, not least in the sultry Träume, in effect a a text completely, that requires intelligence.’ But with Robert’s continuing study for the opera’s Act Two love duet. A student of Bruckner (many of whose encouragement, she produced over two dozen songs, most of them as birthday symphonies he arranged for piano), the Czech-born August Stradal was an avid or Christmas gifts to her husband. Many are easy to mistake for Robert’s, transcriber of Bach, Liszt and Wagner, though alongside his barnstorming opera including the floating, harmonically ambiguousGeheimes Flüstern, one of paraphrases, his transcription of Träume is a paragon of restraint. 10 11 In a characteristic manic burst of creativity, the avidly Wagnerian Hugo Wolf Never one to dish out compliments lightly, Johannes Brahms once remarked composed no fewer than fifty-one Goethe settings during the winter of 1888- that Kirchner could make better arrangements of his works than he could 89. Of these, Anakreons Grab is a tender, tranquil meditation on the Greek poet himself. Kirchner won the master’s approval with transcriptions for piano trio associated with the beauties of nature, the delights of the grape, love and song. of his two sextets. He also transcribed a number of Brahms songs, including As so often, Wolf’s keyboard writing here suggests the textures of a string the plaintive Agnes, where Brahms, characteristically, spices a quasi-folk tune quartet. True to its title, Bruno Hinze-Reinhold’s Idyll expands the song into with irregular phrase lengths and inventively varied accompaniments from a rapt romantic reverie. verse to verse. Richard Strauss’s wife Pauline was famously domineering and abrasive. But she Also mingling the naivety of folksong and the sophistication of art song is the was also a gifted singer who inspired his abiding love affair with the soprano boy-girl dialogue (with the girl calling the shots) of Vergebliches Ständchen, voice. The pair gave frequent recitals for a decade from the early 1890s; and in the style of a Ländler. Eduard Schütt’s elaborate paraphrase, by turns many of Strauss’s songs were composed either expressly for Pauline or with glittering and soulful, takes this ‘serenade in vain’ as a cue for an étude that her voice in mind. Freundliche Vision, one of five Strauss songs transcribed by showcases fashionable Romantic piano textures. the German pianist Walter Gieseking, distils a mood of timeless enchantment. The vision is evoked in C sharp major, with voice and piano entwining their To end their recital Christoph Prégardien and Cyprien Katsaris perform the own distinct melodies; then, as dream blurs into reality, the music melts to the favourite Wiegenlied, first as the composer wrote it, then in a transcription by distant key of D major. the great Lieder pianist Gerald Moore that uses Brahms’s favourite technique of continuous variation. Brahms composed this exquisite waltz-lullaby for his Theodor Kirchner is hardly a name to set the pulse racing today.

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