HOUDA-ŠATUROVÁ – LIEDER RECITAL

In the songs of today’s program we can clearly see the various approaches of different composers to lyrical poems, from the founding personality of concert songs, Franz Schubert, to the representative of the style of the so-called “New Objectivity” Paul Hindemith. FRANZ SCHUBERT‘S (1797–1828) Ständchen was composed in 1826. Its first verse comes from the 3^rd scene of the second act of the play Cymbeline by William Shakespeare, however in the German adaption of the literary historian, translator and philosopher August Wilhelm Schlegel, the next two strophes were attached only in a posthumous edition of the song from 1830 by Johann Anton Friedrich Reil. Schubert’s Romance comes from the musical accompaniment to Helmina von Chézy’s romantic play Rosamunde, Queen of Cyprus. The romantic Rosamunde, which premiered on December 20^th, 1823 at the Theater an der Wien, unfortunately was not successful and the text was later lost. The song To the Nightingale from 1816 on the sixth verse of Matthias Claudius falls into the first period of Schubert’s song production. Johann Wolfgang Goethe stated of his fellow poet, that he ranked among those “with whom he maintained a good-natured mutual cease-fire”, but he could not forgive the “naivety with which he sings about ordinary things as if he were giving thanks to God on high.”

FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY (1809–1847) is the author of thirteen collections of songs and a large number of individual songs. Six Songs, Op. 34,from which comes the song On Wings of Song on the verse of Heinrich Heine, was written between the years 1832 and 1836, at the time when the author was called on to head the Leipzig Gewandhause. The song New Love from the collection Six Songs, Op. 19, also based on Heine’s verses, comes from the period around 1830. While the former song echoes an exotic mood, the latter breaths a mysterious romantic spirit. Mendelssohn’s Six Songs, Op. 86,which includes the song Moon based on the verse of Emanuel Geibel, brings together compositions created over a period of twenty years. The collection was published only after the composer’s death. Nachtlied (Night Song) to the words of Joseph Eichendorff was long considered to be Mendelssohn’s last composition. The collection Twelve Songs, Op. 9,concentrates the compositions of the twenty-year-old Mendelssohn, the author of the text to the song In Spring is not known.

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) built on the song heritage of Franz Schubert. The vast majority of Schumann’s songs were created in the mirror of his relationship to his later wife Clara around the year 1840, his Circle of Songs, Op. 39, on the verse of Joseph Eichendorf also comes from this period. The songs Moon Nightand Spring Night come from this cycle. Schumann’s collection Twelve Songs on the verse of Justin Kerner (1786–1862), including the song Silent Tears, also comes from the year 1840. Kerner worked his entire life as a doctor, and at the end of his life also became interested in spiritualism.

The song and inspiration of romantic poetry are not missing in the works of PAUL HINDEMITH (1895-1963). He wrote Three Serenades, Op. 35,for his wife, whose musical cryptogram is hidden in the last movement. The poets whose verse Hindemith chose included: Adolf Licht, Johann Wilhelm Gleim, Ludwig Tieck, Johannes Wilhelm Meinhold and Siegfried August Mahlmann.  Song, including the musical adaption of the works of romantic poets, was the first field of endeavor of the composers whose creative work is considered to be the direct negation of Romanticism. In Seven Early Songs, from the years 1905-1907, byALBAN BERG (1885-1935), which the composer instrumented in the late twenties, we find the poems of Otto Erich Hartlben, Rainer Maria Rilke, Nikolaus Lenau, as well as Theodor Storm, who as a prose writer is categorized as a representative of literary realism. 

The origins of a great number of songs by RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949) were inspired by his relationship with his future wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna. The composer also designated many of them to be performed by her. Five Little Songs, Op. 69, on poems by Archim von Arnim and Heinrich Heine comes from the year 1918, Eight Songs on the texts of Hermann von Gilm was written by Strauss at the beginning of his career in 1883. The evening is closed again with Ständchen, this time an evening serenade on the words of Adolph Friedrich von Schack.