Thursday, April 19, 2018, at 7:30 pm m a Art of the Song r g o Mark Padmore , Tenor r P Paul Lewis , Piano e h SCHUMANN Liederkreis (1840) Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage T Es treibt mich hin Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen Lieb Liebchen Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann Berg’ und Burgen schaun herunter Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen Mit Myrten und Rosen BRAHMS Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze Sommerabend Mondenschein (1878) Es schauen die Blumen Meerfahrt Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht Intermission Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Steinway Piano Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater Adrienne Arsht Stage Great Performers Support is provided by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Friends of Lincoln Center. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Endowment support for Symphonic Masters is provided by the Leon Levy Fund. Endowment support is also provided by UBS. Nespresso is the Official Coffee of Lincoln Center NewYork-Presbyterian is the Official Hospital of Lincoln Center UPCOMING GREAT PERFORMERS EVENTS: Friday, April 27 at 8:00 pm in David Geffen Hall Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor ESA-PEKKA SALONEN: Pollux (New York premiere) VARÈSE: Amériques SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 5 Pre-concert lecture by Harlow Robinson at 6:45 pm in the David Rubenstein Atrium Wednesday, May 2 at 7:30 pm in Alice Tully Hall Gerald Finley, bass-baritone Julius Drake, piano BEETHOVEN: Neue Liebe, neues Leben; Wonne der Wehmut; Mit einem gemalten Band; Aus Goethes Faust SCHUBERT: Prometheus; Geistes-Gruss; An den Mond; Rastlose Liebe; An Schwager Kronos; Schäfers Klagelied; Wandrers Nachtlied; Erlkönig TCHAIKOVSKY: Don Juan’s Serenade; At the ball; None, but the lonely heart; Over burning ashes RACHMANINOFF: O stay, my love; In the Silence of the Secret Night; Fate; On the Death of a Linnet; Christ is Risen; Spring Waters Selection of favorite folk songs Sunday, May 6 at 3:00 pm in David Geffen Hall London Symphony Orchestra Simon Rattle, conductor Stuart Skelton, tenor Christian Gerhaher, baritone MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit LCGreatPerformers.org. 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Great Performers I The Program SCHUMANN Dichterliebe (1840) Im wunderschönen Monat Mai Aus meinen Tränen sprießen Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ Ich will meine Seele tauchen Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome Ich grolle nicht Und wüßten’s die Blumen Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet Allnächtlich im Traume Aus alten Märchen Die alten, bösen Lieder Great Performers I Snapshot By Susan Youens t Timeframe o One of the most important poets in the history ARTS h of song, and of German literature, was Heinrich 1840 s Heine, born the year of Schubert’s birth (1797) Schumann’s Liederkreis & and died the year of Schumann’s death (1756). Dichterliebe p Victor Hugo’s poem collec - Somehow the eerie coincidence seems only tion Les Rayons et les a appropriate, as both composers spun profound Ombres n music from his words. 1878 S Brahms’s “Mondenschein” Schumann met Heine in 1828, and the poet, Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. somewhat unusually, exerted himself to be kind Pinafore opens in London. to the teenage musician; 12 years later, Schumann could embark on a succession of bril - liant settings of this man’s words and did so with SCIENCE his first Heine cycle: Liederkreis , Op. 24. These 1840 nine songs are a virtuosic “shot across the Publication of Louis Agassiz’s bow,” an announcement of something far more landmark Studies on Glaciers than parlor songs for the amateur bourgeoisie. 1878 Thomas Edison patents the Schumann’s protégé, Brahms, set a great deal of phonograph. Heine to music when he was young, but destroyed the settings. It wasn’t until later in life that he went back to Heine to create six master - IN NEW YORK ful songs on texts by the poet of his youth. Two 1840 of them (“Sommerabend” and “Monden - Coal is the city’s primary fuel. schein”) are paired, and the second is a variation of the first. In the final song of this evening’s 1878 group, Brahms turns the immortal coupling of The Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad Eros and Death into consummately beautiful (“Brighton Line”) opens. music. We then return to Schumann for one of the greatest song cycles in the entire repertoire: Dichterliebe , or Poet’s Love . In 1840, the com - poser selected 20 songs but omitted four for publication. The 16 songs of the final version are masterpieces of musical ingenuity in the service of contradictory inner experience—heartbreak and anger conjoined, irony and emotional truth yoked together. At the end, Schumann provides his own wordless ending in the piano, one differ - ent from the poet’s. —Copyright © 2018 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. Great Performers I Notes on the Program By Susan Youens m When a poetic anthology entitled simply Buch der Lieder (“Book of Songs”) a by Heinrich Heine first appeared in 1827, neither he nor his publisher, Julius r Campe, could have known what a phenomenon it would become. A best - g seller, it was also one of the foremost sources for song composers, and no wonder: In these terse poems, a uniquely mordant voice entered German o r literature. Here, unrequited love and misogynistic contempt, ironic negation of noble sentiments, and recurring battles between the dream world and P reality are at contradictory and simultaneous work. Most of all, Romantic- poetic love is subjected to a drubbing. In the Buch der Lieder , the poet first e consecrates his beloved as something sacred, then lashes her with whips h made of words when she fails to meet the ideal in his mind. t n Liederkreis , Op. 24 (1840) o ROBERT SCHUMANN Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Germany s Died July 29, 1856, in Endenich, Germany e t Approximate length: 23 minutes o These nine songs, completed by the end of February 1840, trace a vague N narrative of love’s ardor, despair, and finally, the metamorphosis of love and grief into art. Schumann unifies his cycles musically; this one begins and ends in the same key (a true “Kreis” or “circle/cycle”). “Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage” is a Lied im Volkston , or folksong-like art song of the sort popular throughout the 19th century. If the back-and-forth alternation of the left- and right-hand parts sounds like a clock ticking or a young man pacing, that is only appropriate to this persona, who anxiously awaits his beloved. In Heine’s world, we expect her to be unfaithful or at least care - lessly tardy, but Schumann, whose thoughts of his fiancée Clara Wieck were far from this bitter, ends the postlude with a wistful cadence and ten - der thoughts. “Es treibt mich hin” is also a song about Time that separates lovers, but in impatient mode; the feverish young lover condemns the lazy hours, which dawdle rather than bringing him swiftly to his sweetheart. In “Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen ,” Heine’s paranoid singer cannot even trust the little birds telling him of the beloved’s “golden word.” The birds speak to pale, unhappy lovers in a magical song-within-a-song. In “Lieb Liebchen,” Heine takes on the Romantic compound of Eros and death, with Schumann’s stark vocal line dogged by the piano softly hammering an unwelcome message: Each heartbeat is a nail in the singer’s coffin. To Heine, the “beautiful cradle of my sorrows” ( “Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden”) was Hamburg, a city he hated, given his tense relationship with his rich uncle Salomon and his unsuccessful courtship of Salomon’s two daughters. We can be sure that Heine would have said “schöne” (“lovely”) Great Performers I Notes on the Program with his lip curled. Not so Schumann, who begins with one of his most gor - geous melodies and then rides a roller coaster of misery, near madness, and exhaustion. “Warte, warte, wilder Schiffsmann” is almost hysterical in its rage, fueled by misogyny both Biblical (Eve as the origin of sin) and classical (Eris, the goddess of discord). In Schumann’s piano postlude, all this hyper- fury evaporates by degrees, with even a hint of a chuckle at the very end. Does the composer perhaps find all this inflated emotion a trifle ridiculous? By contrast, “Berg’ und Burgen schaun herunter” is one of the loveliest specimens of water music in German song, with its lapping waves that gently enfold and buoy the vocal line. Another tiny masterpiece, “Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen,” begins by quoting the Lutheran chorale “Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten.” The vocal line lies higher than congregational melodies, the piano part lower, and the conjunction tells both of triumph over adversity and continuing tension.