37
Festival
programme
In 1840 Schumann was engaged in a protracted battle with Clara Wieck's father who
was doing all he could to prevent the marriage of the young couple. This might explain
why Schumann chose to compose a song cycle far removed from the Romantic
conventions of unfulfilled love. Here, in poems by Adalbert von Chamisso, a woman
describes falling in love with a beautiful young man. He proposes; they marry, and in
due season she bears his child. Only in the final song does she accuse him of having
hurt her, and that only by dying before her and leaving her alone.
The surrealist painter/composer writes:
The Sonata consists of four movements, of an overture and a finale, and seventhly,
of a cadenza in the fourth movement. The first movement is a rondo with four main
themes, designated as such in the text of the Sonata. You yourself will certainly feel
the rhythm, slack or strong, high or low, taut or loose. To explain in detail the variations
and compositions of the themes would be tiresome in the end and detrimental to the
pleasure of reading and listening, and after all I'm not a professor.
In the first movement I draw your attention to the word for word repeats of the
themes before each variation, to the explosive beginning of the first movement, to the
pure lyricism of the sung Jüü-Kaa, to the military severity of the rhythm of the quite
masculine third theme next to the fourth theme which is tremulous and mild as a lamb,
and lastly to the accusing finale of the first movement, with the question `tää?'...
The fourth movement, long-running and quick, comes as a good exercise for the
reader's lungs, in particular because the endless repeats, if they are not to seem too
uniform, require the voice to be seriously raised most of the time. In the finale I draw
your attention to the deliberate return of the alphabet up to `a'. You feel it coming and
expect the a impatiently. But twice over it stops painfully on the `b'...
I do no more than offer a possibility for a solo voice with maybe not much imagination.
I myself give a different cadenza each time and, since I recite it entirely by heart, I
thereby get the cadenza to produce a very lively effect, forming a sharp contrast with
the rest of the Sonata which is quite rigid. There.
8.00pm sT JOsEPH's CHurCH
An Evening of song Life, Love and Laughter
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Three songs for bass voice and piano
L'incanto degli occhi D 902 No.1
Il traditor deluso D 902 No.2
Il modo di prender moglie D 902 No.3
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Thomas Meglioranza (Baritone)
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David Selig (Piano)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Frauenliebe und -leben, Op.42
Seit ich ihn gesehen
Er, der Herrlichste von Allen
Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben
Du Ring am meinem Finger
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern
Süsser Freund, du blickest
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan
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Patricia Wright (Soprano)
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Hamish Milne (Piano)
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
Ursonate (`Primal sonata')
Introduction and Rondo
Largo
Scherzo - Trio - Scherzo
Presto - Denoument - Cadenza - Finale
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Ron Pulman (Baritone)
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Madonna Davies (Soprano)
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John Goodson (Tenor)
In the last years of his life, Schubert was friendly with the legendary bass, Luigi
Lablache. Lablache sang Schubert's German Lieder with enthusiasm, but it was
perhaps as a tribute to the singer that Schubert turned to the Italian texts of the great
eighteenth century librettist and poet Pietro Metastasio. The three songs in this set
have no particular relationship. The first is an address to the stars, which alternatively
comfort and disturb this character from Metastasio's Attila Regolo. The second a
recitative and aria dramatises fear, horror and the dark night of the soul, while in
third, the poet announces that he's getting married for the money!
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