CKD 382 Linn Records Label of the Year ‘Linn is the very model of a modern record company, ensuring that the highest standards are maintained from the studio right through the company’s very impressive digital store.’ JAMES JOLLY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GRAMOPHONE ALSO AVAILABLE BY THE PRINCE CONSORT ON LINN RECORDS NED ROREM ON AN ECHOING ROAD CKD 342 LINN, GLASGOW ROAD, WATERFOOT, GLASGOW G76 0EQ UK t: +44 (0)141 303 5027 f: +44 (0)141 303 5007 e: [email protected] the prince consort other love songs JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-97) BRAHMS LIEBESLIEDER WALZER Opus 52 NEUE LIEBESLIEDER Opus 65 songs by Brahms and Stephen Hough 1 Rede, Mädchen, allzu liebes 27 Verzicht, o Herz, auf Rettung 2 Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut 28 Finstere Schatten der Nacht 3 O die Frauen, o die Frauen 29 An jeder Hand die Finger 4 Wie des Abends schöne Röte 30 Ihr schwarzen Augen 5 Die grüne Hopfenranke 31 Wahre, wahre deinen Sohn 6 Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel 32 Rosen steckt mir an die Mutter 7 Wohl schön bewandt war es 33 Vom Gebirge, Well auf Well 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir 34 Weiche Gräser im Revier 9 Am Donaustrande 35 Nagen am Herzen fühl ich 10 O wie sanft die Quelle 36 Ich Kose süß mit der und der 11 Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen 37 Alles, alles in den Wind 12 Schloßer auf, und mache Schlößer 38 Schwarzer Wald, dein Schatten 13 Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft 39 Nein, Geliebter, setze dich 14 Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar 40 Flammenauge, dunkles Haar 15 Nachtigall, sie singt so schön 41 Zum Schluß 16 Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe 17 Nicht wandle, mein Licht Recorded in Potton Hall, Suffolk, UK 18 Es bebet das Gesträuche from 25th–29th October 2010 Produced by John Fraser with guest artists Philip Fowke and Stephen Hough STEPHEN HOUGH (b.1961) Engineered by Philip Hobbs Philip Fowke joins Alisdair Hogarth at the piano on tracks 1~18 & 27~41 OTHER LOVE SONGS (2010) Post-production by Julia Thomas, Finesplice Ltd and Stephen Hough joins Alisdair Hogarth at the piano on tracks 19~26 19 When I Have Passed (Claude McKay) The Prince Consort photographs 20 All Shall Be Well (Julian of Norwich) by Richard Ecclestone The Prince Consort would like to thank 21 The City’s Love (Claude McKay) Stephen Hough photograph by Grant Hiroshima Philip Fowke photograph Joyce, Mary and James Hogarth, Rayfield Artists, Simon Yates, James Murphy, Sara Mohr-Pietsch, 22 Madam and Her Madam (Langston Hughes)* by Lord Patrick Douglas Hamilton John Gilhooly at Wigmore Hall, Stephen Hough, Philip Fowke, Glen Gough & Colin Turner at Steinway & Sons, 23 Kashmiri Song (Laurence Hope) Design by John Haxby Ed Hall at Canis Media, Veronica Davies, Paul Dent & John Kilby at Lewis Golden and Co. 24 Because I Liked You Better (A.E. Housman) The Liebeslieder translations are printed with kind The Prince Consort gratefully acknowledge the support of their sponsors: Simon Yates, Philip & Chris Carne, 25 The Colour of His Hair (A.E. Housman) permission from Richard Stokes. The Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust, The Vernon Ellis Trust and The Consort Foundation 26 Simon, Son of John (St John’s Gospel) *pub. Estate of Langston Hughes 2 – other love songs other love songs – 3 LIEBESLIEDER WALTZES : JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-97) The 1860s had been turbulent years for Brahms, in which love and loss were rahms’ two sets of Liebeslieder waltzes are the perfect repertoire for an intimately entwined. It was the death of his mother in 1865 which had prompted Bensemble like The Prince Consort. The combination of part-songs and solo the outpourings of the German Requiem. And he spent much of the decade in lieder suits this group down to the ground: a flexible band of top-class soloists unrequited love: first with Ottilie Hauer, with whom he played through many who share an understanding of the joys and demands of consort singing. What’s of Schubert’s songs in 1863, and then with Robert and Clara Schumann’s more, they are young, bringing a freshness to the Liebeslieder Walzer Opus 52, daughter, Julie. It is thought to be his feelings for Julie that infuse the Opus 52 and a poignancy to the Neue Liebeslieder Opus 65. Liebeslieder with their lightness, their swing. They are full of a certain reckless hopefulness which threatens to sweep us away. But The Prince Consort are also passionate explorers of new repertoire, and it’s the inclusion of Stephen Hough’s Other Love Songs (specially commissioned for Brahms wrote them in the summer of 1869 while he was staying near Julie and the group by its artistic director and pianist Alisdair Hogarth) which makes Clara in Baden-Baden. The poems he chose were by Georg Friedrich Daumer, this recording a unique proposition. Hough’s songs may be moving, challenging one of his favourite poets – in all, he set more than fifty of Daumer’s verses to and exquisite vignettes in their own right, but they also make new sense of the music. All eighteen poems come from Daumer’s collection Polydor, inspired by Brahms, bridging what could be an uncomfortable gap between his two sets various folk tales and songs from Russia and Poland. (It’s worth remembering of Liebeslieder, and lending them a contemporary resonance that makes for a that the ‘waltz’ of these Liebeslieder is not the Viennese waltz we think of today; compelling listen. This is an exploration of love in its many forms: both multi- instead, in keeping with the folk motifs of Daumer’s texts, these are based on faceted and universal. the Ländler, an Austro-German peasant dance in much slower triple time, the same kind that Haydn and Schubert had played with, and which later infused he two sets of Liebeslieder occupy an interesting and transitional period Mahler’s symphonies with nostalgia and irony.) Tin Brahms’ life. The Opus 52 Liebeslieder Walzer (Love Song Waltzes) date from 1869, just a few months after his first major international hit, the Brahms finished the Liebeslieder Walzer on the 8th August 1869. He performed German Requiem, was premiered at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The Opus 65 Neue a selection of them at a private gathering a fortnight later, sent them off to Liebeslieder (New Love Songs) were published six years later in 1875, just a few his publisher Simrock just four days after that, and by October they were in months before another major compositional breakthrough, the completion of print. The following year, Brahms and Clara Schumann shared the keyboard his long-awaited First Symphony. At the age of 43, it opened up a whole new as they accompanied a group of singer friends in the first public performance phase of his musical life. of the set, all eighteen waltzes in one go. They were a resounding success; 4 – other love songs other love songs – 5 Simrock went on to publish several versions of the waltzes, and Brahms some more violent, some full of swing – but the overriding feeling is positive, himself orchestrated yet more. perhaps most of all in the best-loved song of the set, ‘Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel nahm den Flug’ (no. 6). But if you run the end of the first set straight into the Over the next five years he composed a further fifteen waltzes, again a mix of beginning of the second, it jars immediately. The Neue Liebeslieder are much solo and ensemble songs, and Simrock published them as the Neue Liebeslieder darker, somehow less coherent as a set, and so before we get to them as listeners Opus 65 in 1875. Both sets of waltzes were a publisher’s dream: intended for we need to pause for thought, to get to grips with the corner about to be turned. amateurs to dip into at home, with whatever forces they had to hand, they were flexible and technically manageable, yet hugely rewarding to perform. This is where Stephen Hough’s Other Love Songs come in. Hough gives us the But where Julie was concerned, things didn’t end well for Brahms. At the end opportunity to take time out from Brahms’ frothy waltzes, and consider love st of the summer of 1869, she married someone else. Channelling his sorrow from a sequence of refreshingly different perspectives. Even in the 21 century once more into a musical masterpiece, he responded to the news with the Alto we like to know where we are with things, and to package love into neat Rhapsody Opus 53. It was ostensibly a wedding present for Julie, but it was boxes. But these songs refuse to help us orient ourselves – they are constantly by no means a light-hearted one. And nor are the Neue Liebeslieder Opus 65 destabilising us, creeping up on us with the same knack of surprise as love itself. which followed as light-hearted as the first set of Liebeslieder. In fact, they They’re not a tribute to Brahms, but if Hough nods at all to the Liebeslieder are unmistakeably different in tone: darker, more unsettling. Could this be an it’s in the way he plays with duplets and triplets, cutting across each other to inevitable consequence of the hardening of the heart on encountering loss? undermine our memory of the triple time of the Ländler. (This is particularly Of course, it’s a dangerous game trying to match up biographical detail with true of the opening song, ‘When I Have Passed’, which carries an actual echo of musical substance, but since this recording presents the two Liebeslieder sets the last waltz of the Opus 52 set.) The very essence of these love songs is their together, knowing that the loss of Julie falls chronologically in the middle is otherness, and they hold some of the psychological shadow which is largely one way of making sense of the dramatic difference between them.