Programme - Barbican

ECHO Rising Stars
Cathy Krier &
Benjamin Appl
Thursday 29 October 2015 7.00pm
Milton Court Concert Hall
Schubert Fantasy in C, ‘Wandererfantasie’ (21’)
Denis Schuler L’autre rivage (7’) UK premiere
Janáček On an Overgrown Path, Book 1 (31’)
Cathy Krier piano
Cathy Krier was nominated as an ECHO Rising Star
by the Philharmonie, Paris
interval 20 minutes
Schubert Selected Lieder (33’)
Nico Muhly The Last Letter (c11’) world premiere
Grieg Six Songs, Op 48 (15’)
Benjamin Appl baritone
Gary Matthewman piano
Falk Kastell
Benjamin Appl was nominated as an ECHO Rising
Star by the Barbican Centre, London
Commissioned by the Philharmonie
Luxembourg, the Barbican and
the European Concert Hall
Organisation. With the support
of the Culture Programme of the
European Union.
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The music
Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Fantasy in C, D760 ‘Wandererfantasie’
Allegro con fuoco ma non troppo –
Adagio –
Presto –
Allegro
Denis Schuler (born 1970)
L’autre rivage UK premiere
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
On an Overgrown Path: Book 1
1 Our evenings
2 A blown-away leaf
3 Come with us!
4 The Madonna of Frýdek
5 They chattered like swallows
6 Words fail!
7 Good night!
8 Unutterable anguish
9 In tears
10 The barn owl has not flown away!
Cathy Krier piano
interval 20 minutes
Franz Schubert
Selected Lieder
Nacht und Träume, D827
Ganymed, D544
Die Sterne, D939
Dass sie hier gewesen, D775
Der Musensohn, D764
An die Apfelbäume, wo ich Julien erblickte, D197
Abendstern, D806
Der Wanderer, D493
Die Götter Griechenlands, D677
Nico Muhly (born 1981)
The Last Letter world premiere
Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Six Songs, Op 48
1 Gruss
2 Dereinst, Gedanke mein
3 Lauf der Welt
4 Die verschwiegene Nachtigall
5 Zur Rosenzeit
6 Ein Traum
Benjamin Appl baritone
Gary Matthewman piano
Coming up in the ECHO Rising Stars Series:
25 Feb 2016
Remy Van Kesteren & Quatuor Zaïde
2
11 May 2016
Harriet Krijgh & Trio Catch
Introduction
Welcome
Welcome to this evening’s concert, which
launches the 2015/16 ECHO Rising Stars
season here at Milton Court Concert Hall.
Every artist nominated as a Rising Star by
the European Concert Hall Organisation
(ECHO), of which the Barbican is a part, is
on the cusp of a major international career.
Reflecting that, this season our concerts
have moved from a lunchtime slot to an
evening one, with each half of the concert
dedicated to a particular artist. Each
programme also features a brand-new
composition written especially for
the performer.
Luxembourg-born pianist Cathy Krier
gives the UK premiere of Denis Schuler’s
L’autre rivage, which translates as ‘The
Other Shore’ and explores what happens
when reality and fantasy collide. Fantasy
plays a large role in the remaining pieces
that Cathy presents: Schubert’s mighty
and highly virtuoso Wandererfantasie,
and the first book of Janáček’s utterly
inward and personal piano cycle On an
Overgrown Path.
Nico Muhly, whose Sentences for Iestyn
Davies made such an impact last season,
has written The Last Letter for the hugely
gifted German baritone Benjamin Appl. In
it, Muhly takes excerpts of correspondence
expressing love, lust and bitterness,
culminating in an extract from a poem by
Schiller that Schubert also set and which
forms the last of a group of nine highly
contrasting Lieder performed by Benjamin.
He ends with Grieg’s lustrous set of Six
Songs, which set a diverse range of poets
but which are bound together by the
recurring subjects of love and nature.
Huw Humphreys
Head of Music
Barbican Classical Music Podcasts
3
Stream or download our Barbican Classical Music podcasts
for exclusive interviews and content from the best classical
artists from around the world. Recent artists include
Iestyn Davies, Joyce DiDonato, Sir Harrison Birtwistle,
Evgeny Kissin, Maxim Vengerov and Nico Muhly.
Available on iTunes, Soundcloud and the Barbican website
Navigating the thorns of poetry
On 31 March 1824, soon after completing his
song ‘Abendstern’ and the D minor Quartet –
the so-called ‘Death and the Maiden’ – Franz
Schubert wrote to his friend Leo Kupelweiser:
‘I have written very few new songs, but against
that I have tried my hand at several instrumental
things, and have composed two quartets … and
want to write another quartetto, really wanting in
this manner to pave the way to a big symphony.’
For Schubert, miniature musical forms were the
seeds of great things: and the smallest song
contained multitudes. Schubert planned to
grow a symphony from his D minor Quartet,
itself cultivated from his song ‘Der Tod und das
Mädchen’. Nearly a century later, in 1916, Leoš
Janáček put it in his own words:
‘The certainty with which we immediately
understand any lowering or raising of the
speech, any conversation, testifies to the fact
that similarly, within a tune, a process is hidden
through which we all live, and that a tune, when
uttered, awakens this process within us.’
In other words, even the smallest scrap of
melody can speak without limits. Grieg brings
Wagnerian vistas into the drawing room; Nico
Muhly evokes whole lost lives; Denis Schuler finds
different worlds in the two hands of a pianist.
And Schubert took a phrase and a rhythm from
his Schmidt von Lübeck setting ‘Der Wanderer’
(1816) and, in November 1822, let them flower
into what is effectively a single-movement piano
sonata of majestic sweep and glittering virtuosity.
4
Admittedly, he didn’t call it a sonata, but the
Wandererfantasie falls into four interlinked parts,
complete with scherzo and trio and fugal finale,
and suggests worlds only remotely implied in
the song, with its distant mountains and valleys.
Schubert told friends that the Fantasy was written
to commission for ‘a certain wealthy gentleman’:
in fact, its dedicatee was Emmanuel Karl von
Liebenberg, a piano pupil of Johann Nepomuk
Hummel. And it’s tailored so well to Hummel’s
dazzling brand of pianism that Schubert himself
was supposedly unable to play it right through.
(‘Let the devil play the stuff!’ he’s reported to
have cried as he leapt, defeated, from the piano
stool.)
Yet that commission may account for the
Fantasy’s extraordinary second section. Schubert
almost never wrote an Adagio in a major
instrumental work. But here, what begins as a
vehicle for the virtuoso to show off his Romantic
sensibilities in his best Beethoven ‘Pathétique’
manner, soon wanders into stranger regions. ‘In
his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer,’ writes
Alfred Brendel. ‘He likes to move at the edge of
the precipice, and does so with the assurance of
a sleepwalker.’
This idea wouldn’t seem all strange to Denis
Schuler. The Swiss composer has often moved
creatively between different worlds of sound and
experience. Of his new commission for Cathy
Krier, he writes:
‘The other side, elsewhere, assumes the existence
of two planes, of two spaces distinguished by
their separation. Our perception of the world
is tied to our experience and our imagination.
But what lies beyond, across the frontiers? The
continuation of a journey? Reality and fantasy
become entangled. L’autre rivage (“The Other
Shore”) is a study of resonance. Distant worlds
are revealed side by side: the vibrations of two
L’autre rivage was written for the pianist Cathy
Krier and is dedicated to the memory of two
music-lovers, Denise and Margrit.’
‘The path to my mother’s has become overgrown
with clover’ run the words of an old Moravian
wedding song. For Leoš Janáček, they were
vibrant with meaning. He felt estranged from
the wider musical world, and then there was the
death from typhoid, in 1903, of his 21-year-old
daughter Olga. Meanwhile, the rural Moravian
folk-culture that so fascinated him felt ever
more distant, the route back ever more obscure.
Against this background, Janáček worked
intermittently at two sets of keyboard miniatures
between 1900 and 1912. They seemed to come
from a lost emotional world; or, as Janáček put
it on the collection’s title-page: Po zarostlém
chodníčku (‘On an Overgrown Path’).
More than almost any other composer of
his time, Janáček creates in his music its own
meaning. ‘Words fail!’ exclaims the composer
at the head of one of the nine pieces that
make up the first volume; the music speaks
(according to the composer) of ‘the bitterness of
disappointment’. Such hints are part of the cycle’s
special atmosphere, and a tender homage
Programme notes
to the rural folklore that was the wellspring of
Janáček’s creative imagination. ‘The Madonna
of Frýdek’ sketches a religious meditation in a
small town near Janáček’s childhood home of
Hukvaldy; ‘They chattered like swallows’ playfully
captures the composer’s lifelong fascination with
the patterns of everyday speech.
And the owl? The usual English translation is
‘barn owl’, though the composer David Matthews
has identified the call heard in the music as that
of a tawny owl. According to custom, the owl was
a harbinger of death, taking flight as the soul left
the body. Janáček sets its cry against ‘an intimate
song of life’, and the emotion he recollects
here in music is almost unbearably personal
– ‘reminiscences so dear to me’, he told his
publisher, ‘that I do not think they will ever vanish’.
Choose any nine Schubert songs, meanwhile,
and the stories that can be told with them are
infinite. It seems incredible today that Schubert
was ever thought of as the genial, lovelorn
tunesmith sentimentalised in works such as the
1920s operetta Lilac Time. For every cheerful
‘Der Musensohn’ (composed in December 1822,
some of the virtuosity of the Wandererfantasie
seems to have splashed over into its piano part),
we discover a miniature music-drama such as ‘An
die Apfelbäume’ (1815), or hear with astonishment
the chromatic harmonies, drenched with longing,
with which Schubert opens his setting of Rückert’s
‘Dass sie hier gewesen’ (1823).
If there’s any single key to this particular
sequence of musical soliloquies, it probably lies,
once more, in ‘Der Wanderer’. As Alfred Brendel
puts it: ‘To wander is the Romantic condition; one
yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued
by the terror of finding no escape. More often
5
clearly distinct sound fields – one played by the
left hand, the other by the right – interweave
and clash. Each note blends with the next, until
the movement of the string ceases naturally: the
sounds, thus, in a sense, unfurl outside time. Their
entwining expresses a tension and generates
a form. They suggest obstinacy, the energy of
life – and hope too. Their superposition creates
harmonic fields, complex at times, that operate
on memory and are part of the richness of sound
of this body: an entire piano becomes resonant.
than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.’
Benjamin Appl’s selection of songs ranges from
the emotionally charged inwardness of ‘Nacht
und Träume’ (its text created by the composer
from two separate poems in 1823 as a tribute
to his friend Matthäus von Collin, who had died
the previous year) and the quiet exaltation of
Schubert’s 1817 setting of Goethe’s ‘Ganymed’,
to this closing fragment of Schiller’s ‘Die Götter
Griechenlands’ (1819) – a poem whose desolate
pessimism would bear bitter fruit in the haunted
Menuetto of Schubert’s A minor Quartet and
which, two centuries later, clearly haunts Nico
Muhly too. In Muhly’s own words:
‘Navigating the thorns of poetry’ has always
been the supreme challenge for the songcomposer. ‘When I write songs, my principal
goal is not to compose music but to do justice
to the poet’s most intimate intentions,’ wrote
Edvard Grieg to his biographer Henry Finck –
in German. It might seem hard to square that
assertion with the language in which it was
made, but Grieg had been fluent in German
since his days at the Leipzig Conservatory,
and was pragmatic about the prospects of
Norwegian songs in turn-of-the-century Europe.
In the case of his Six Songs, Op 48, he had a
further motivation. Although he composed the
first two – the joyous Schubertian Heine setting
‘The Last Letter is a collection of five songs for the ‘Gruss’ and ‘Dereinst, Gedanke mein’, with its
baritone Benjamin Appl. When we met to discuss Tristan-esque harmonies – in 1884, he completed
possible texts, Ben proposed setting letters sent
the set in August 1889 for the young Swedish
between soldiers and their loved ones during the soprano Ellen Nordgren Gulbranson, who would
First World War. I love found texts; it seems much go on to be Bayreuth’s reigning Brünnhilde in the
easier than navigating the thorns of poetry.
first decade of the 20th century.
6
The first song exists in a foggy landscape, with
a lazily anxious sequence of pitches from the
piano. The voice repeats the text “Please, tell me
your name, as I have forgotten it” over a choralelike structure. The second one is a breathless
love song: obsessive, repetitive and almost
out of control. The third, in which a woman is
asking for a conjugal visit from her husband,
takes the first movement’s piano figuration and
makes it fast, cluttered and hungrily ecstatic. The
fourth section is a heartbreaking letter from a
woman divorcing her husband and placing their
children in an orphanage. The piano establishes
a steady, deliberate pattern, over which the
voice describes simultaneous devastation:
economic, and emotional. The last song breaks
the form, and sets a translation of the same
poem by Schiller as used by Schubert (“Die
Götter Griechenlands”), describing a deserted
landscape. The piano agitates a sequence of 13
chords in a large cycle, and the songs end with a
fragment of the introduction, floating over belllike chords.’
Grieg had ‘no sympathy with attempts to transfer
the Wagnerian opera style to the Lied’. Instead,
he playfully arranges a discreet meeting of the
two worlds: why else choose a poem by the
real-life (as opposed to Tannhäuser’s) Walther
von der Vogelweide, and make the singer echo
the cries of the Woodbird in Wagner’s Siegfried?
But Grieg’s settings of Uhland’s ‘Lauf der Welt’
and Goethe’s ‘Zur Rosenzeit’ reinvent Schubert’s
tradition in his own gloriously fresh voice. The
intimacy, and the wider world of emotion behind
each of these miniatures, are unmistakable.
And with good reason. Gulbranson may have
sung this particular cycle (often with Grieg at
the piano), but the composer explained that,
‘My songs came to life naturally and through
a necessity like that of a natural law, and all of
them were written for her’: not Gulbranson, but
Nina, his beloved wife, ‘and I dare say, the only
true interpreter of all my songs’.
Programme note © Richard Bratby
Texts
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Nacht und Träume, D827
Heil’ge Nacht, du sinkest nieder;
Nieder wallen auch die Träume,
Wie dein Mondlicht durch die Räume,
Durch der Menschen stille Brust.
Die belauschen sie mit Lust;
Rufen, wenn der Tag erwacht:
Kehre wieder, heil’ge Nacht!
Holde Träume, kehret wieder!
Holy night, you sink down;
dreams, too, float down,
like your moonlight through space,
through the silent hearts of men.
They listen with delight,
crying out when day awakes:
come back, holy night!
Fair dreams, return!
Matthäus von Collin (1779–1824)
Ganymed, D544
Wie im Morgenglanze
Du rings mich anglühst,
Frühling, Geliebter!
Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne
Sich an mein Herze drängt
Deiner ewigen Wärme
Heilig Gefühl,
Unendliche Schöne!
Dass ich dich fassen möcht’
In diesen Arm!
How your glow envelops me
in the morning radiance,
spring, my beloved!
With love’s thousandfold joy
the hallowed sensation
of your eternal warmth
floods my heart,
infinite beauty!
O that I might clasp you
in my arms!
Ach, an deinem Busen
Lieg’ ich und schmachte,
Und deine Blumen, dein Gras
Drängen sich an mein Herz.
Du kühlst den brennenden
Durst meines Busens,
Lieblicher Morgenwind!
Ruft drein die Nachtigall
Liebend mach mir aus dem Nebeltal.
Ich komm’, ich komme!
Ach wohin, wohin?
Ah, on your breast
I lie languishing,
and your flowers, your grass
press close to my heart.
You cool the burning
thirst within my breast,
sweet morning breeze,
as the nightingale calls
tenderly to me from the misty valley.
I come, I come!
But whither? Ah, whither?
Hinauf! strebt’s hinauf!
Es schweben die Wolken
Abwärts, die Wolken
Neigen sich der sehnenden Liebe.
Mir! Mir!
In eurem Schosse
Aufwärts!
Umfangend umfangen!
Aufwärts an deinen Busen,
All-liebender Vater!
Upwards! Strive upwards!
The clouds drift
down, yielding
to yearning love,
to me, to me!
In your lap,
upwards,
embracing and embraced!
Upwards to your bosom,
all-loving Father!
7
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Die Sterne, D939
Wie blitzen die Sterne so hell durch die Nacht!
Bin oft schon darüber vom Schlummer erwacht.
Doch schelt’ ich die lichten Gebilde drum nicht,
Sie üben im Stillen manch heilsame Pflicht.
Sie wallen hoch oben in Engelgestalt,
Sie leuchten dem Pilger durch Heiden und Wald.
Sie schweben als Boten der Liebe umher,
Und tragen oft Küsse weit über das Meer.
Sie blicken dem Dulder recht mild ins Gesicht,
Und säumen die Tränen mit silbernem Licht.
Und weisen von Gräbern gar tröstlich und hold
Uns hinter das Blaue mit Fingern von Gold.
So sei denn gesegnet du strahlige Schar!
Und leuchte mir lange noch freundlich und klar!
Und wenn ich einst liebe, seid hold dem Verein,
Und euer Geflimmer lasst Segen uns sein!
How brightly the stars glitter through the night!
I have often been aroused by them from slumber.
But I do not chide the shining beings for that,
for they secretly perform many a benevolent
task.
They wander high above in the form of angels;
they light the pilgrim’s way through heath and
wood.
They hover like harbingers of love
and often bear kisses far across the sea.
They gaze tenderly into the sufferer’s face
and fringe his tears with silver light.
And comfortingly, gently, direct us away from the
grave,
beyond the azure with fingers of gold.
I bless you, radiant throng!
Long may you shine upon me, clear, pleasing
light!
And if one day I fall in love, then smile upon the
bond
and let your twinkling be a blessing upon us.
Karl Gottfried von Leitner (1800–90)
Dass sie hier gewesen, D775
Dass der Ostwind Düfte
Hauchet in die Lüfte,
Dadurch tut er kund,
Dass du hier gewesen.
The east wind
breathes fragrance into the air,
and so doing it makes known
that you have been here!
Dass hier Tränen rinnen,
Dadurch wirst du innen,
Wär’s dir sonst nicht kund,
Dass ich hier gewesen.
Since tears flow here
you will know,
though you are otherwise unaware,
that I have been here!
Schönheit oder Liebe,
Ob versteckt sie bliebe?
Düfte tun es und Tränen kund,
Dass sie hier gewesen.
Beauty or love:
can they remain concealed?
Fragrant scents and tears proclaim
that she has been here!
8
Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866)
Roaming through field and wood,
whistling my song,
thus I go from place to place!
And all keep time with me,
and all move
in measure with me.
Ich kann sie kaum erwarten,
Die erste Blum’ im Garten,
Die erste Blüt’ am Baum.
Sie grüssen meine Lieder,
Und kommt der Winter wieder,
Sing’ ich noch jenen Traum.
I can scarcely wait for them,
the first flower in the garden,
the first blossom on the tree.
They greet my songs,
and when winter returns
I am still singing my dream of them.
Ich sing’ ihn in der Weite,
Auf Eises Läng’ und Breite,
Da blüht der Winter schön!
Auch diese Blüte schwindet,
Und neue Freude findet
Sich auf bebauten Höhn.
I sing it far and wide,
the length and breadth of the ice.
Then winter blooms in beauty!
This blossom, too, vanishes,
and new joys are found
on the cultivated hillsides.
Denn wie ich bei der Linde
Das junge Völkchen finde,
Sogleich erreg’ ich sie.
Der stumpfe Bursche bläht sich,
Das steife Mädchen dreht sich
Nach meiner Melodie.
For when, by the linden tree,
I come upon young folk,
I at once stir them.
The dull lad puffs himself up,
the demure girl whirls
in time to my tune.
Ihr gebt den Sohlen Flügel
Und treibt, durch Tal und Hügel,
Den Liebling weit von Haus.
Ihr lieben, holden Musen,
Wann ruh’ ich ihr am Busen
Auch endlich wieder aus?
You give my feet wings,
and drive your favourite over hill and dale,
far from home.
Dear, gracious Muses,
when shall I at last find rest again
on her bosom?
Texts
Der Musensohn, D764
Durch Feld und Wald zu schweifen,
Mein Liedchen weg zu pfeifen,
So geht’s von Ort zu Ort!
Und nach dem Takte reget,
Und nach dem Mass beweget
Sich alles an mir fort.
An die Apfelbäume, wo ich Julien erblickte, D197
Ein heilig Säuseln und ein Gesangeston
Durchzittre deine Wipfel, o Schattengang,
Wo bang und wild der ersten Liebe
Selige Taumel mein Herz berauschten.
Let solemn murmuring and the sound of singing
vibrate through the tree-tops above you,
O shaded walk,
where, fearful and impassioned, the blissful
frenzy of first love seized my heart.
Die Abendsonne bebte wie lichtes Gold
Durch Purpurblüten, bebte wie lichtes Gold
Um ihres Busens Silberschleier;
Und ich zerfloss in Entzückungsschauer.
The evening sun shimmered like brilliant gold
through purple blossoms; shimmered like brilliant
gold around the silver veil on her breast.
And I dissolved in a shudder of ecstasy.
Nach langer Trennung küsse mit Engelkuss
Ein treuer Jüngling hier das geliebte Weib,
Und schwör in diesem Blütendunkel
Ew’ge Treue der Auserkornen.
After long separation let a faithful youth
kiss with an angel’s kiss his beloved wife,
and in the darkness of this blossom
pledge eternal constancy to his chosen one.
9
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ein Blümchen sprosse, wenn wir gestorben sind,
Aus jedem Rasen, welchen ihr Fuss berührt,
Und trag’ auf jedem seiner Blätter
Meines verherrlichten Mädchens Namen.
May a flower bloom, when we are dead,
from every lawn touched by her foot.
And may each of its leaves
bear the name of my exalted love.
Ludwig Hölty (1748–76)
Abendstern, D806
Was weilst du einsam an dem Himmel,
O schöner Stern? und bist so mild;
Warum entfernt das funkelnde Gewimmel
Der Brüder sich von deinem Bild?
‘Ich bin der Liebe treuer Stern,
Sie halten sich von Liebe fern.’
Why do you linger all alone in the sky,
fair star? For you are so gentle;
why does the host of sparkling brothers
shun your sight?
‘I am the faithful star of love;
they keep far away from love.’
So solltest du zu ihnen gehen,
Bist du der Liebe, zaud’re nicht!
Wer möchte denn dir widerstehen?
Du süsses eigensinnig Licht.
‘Ich säe, schaue keinen Keim,
Und bleibe trauernd still daheim.’
If you are love,
you should go to them without delay!
For who could resist you,
sweet, wayward light?
‘I sow no seed, I see no shoot,
and remain here, silent and mournful.’
Johann Baptist Mayrhofer (1787–1836)
Der Wanderer, D493
Ich komme vom Gebirge her,
Es dampft das Tal, es braust das Meer.
Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh,
Und immer fragt der Seufzer: wo?
I come from the mountains;
the valley steams, the ocean roars.
I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs forever ask: Where?
Die Sonne dünkt mich hier so kalt,
Die Blüte welk, das Leben alt,
Und was sie reden, leerer Schall,
Ich bin ein Fremdling überall.
Here the sun seems so cold,
the blossom faded, life old,
and men’s words mere hollow noise;
I am a stranger everywhere.
Wo bist du, mein geliebtes Land?
Gesucht, geahnt und nie gekannt!
Das Land, das Land, so hoffnungsgrün,
Das Land, wo meine Rosen blühn,
Where are you, my beloved land?
Sought, dreamt of, yet never known!
The land so green with hope,
the land where my roses bloom,
Wo meine Freunde wandeln gehn,
Wo meine Toten auferstehn,
Das Land, das meine Sprache spricht,
O Land, wo bist du?
Where my friends walk,
where my dead ones rise again,
the land that speaks my tongue,
O land, where are you?
Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh,
Und immer fragt der Seufzer: wo?
Im Geisterhauch tönt’s mir zurück:
‘Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück!’
I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs forever ask: Where?
In a ghostly whisper the answer comes:
‘There, where you are not, is happiness!’
10
Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck (1766–1849)
Fair world, where are you? Return again,
sweet springtime of nature!
Alas, only in the magic land of song
does your fabled memory live on.
The deserted fields mourn,
no god reveals himself to me;
of that warm, living image
only a shadow has remained.
Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805)
Translations © Richard Wigmore
Texts
Die Götter Griechenlands, D677
Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blütenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,
Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick,
Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde
Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.
Nico Muhly (born 1981)
The Last Letter
1
Dear Molly,
A happy Christmas. I am sending this to my aunt
to forward to you as I do not know the address.
Please, tell me your name, as I have forgotten it.
3
Dear Leader of the Company!
I have a request to make of you. Although my
husband has only been in the field for four
months, I would like to ask you to grant him a
11
2
Jack – my own – my only love – how I look
for your next letter – how much longer shall I
have to wait? Dearhearty, I want you – my life
– Jack – how changed it is when you are by my
side – what different air I seem to breathe into
my lungs! Jack – Jack – oh! Hasten the day, the
moment when I shall be by his side again – Jack,
my Jack – my same, same heartmate, Goodnight
my love – God bless you my own. How you
would have smiled if you could have met me up
the road today – Yes! you would then – to have
seen me pushing David in his pram to Brayfield
all on my own – Jack, if only – but then how can
I say, how can I express all that is in my heart?
My love, my own, at such moments, Jack, when
my love has looked, has seen into the very depths
of my soul – My Jack – My, ‘Our’ sacred love
– when my very soul has been revealed to him –
Jack – you know – How it grows and grows – My
heart – surely it will burst – Jack – Jack – I want
you – Oh! Let me feel you crushing my very life
into yours – Jack – Jack – I live for you – always,
always my own.
leave of absence, namely, because of our sexual
relationship. I would like to have my husband just
once for the satisfaction of my natural desires. I
just can’t live like this any more. I can’t stand it. It
is, of course, impossible for me to be satisfied in
other ways, firstly, because of all the children and
secondly, because I do not want to betray my
husband. So I would like to ask you very kindly to
grant my request.
I will then be able to carry on until we are
victorious.
With all reverence, Frau S.
4
Dear Husband!
This is the last letter I am writing to you, because
on the 24th I am going to marry another man.
Then, I don’t have to work any longer. I have
already been working for three years as long as
you are away from home. All other men come
home for leave, only you POWs never come. I
will give the children to the orphanage. I don’t
get a rat’s ass about a life like that! All wives
whose husbands are POWs will do the same
thing and they will all get rid of the children.
Three years of work are too much for the women
and 20 marks for benefit and 10 marks per
child are not enough. One cannot live on that.
Everything is so expensive now. One pound of
bacon costs 8 marks, a shirt 9 marks. Your wife ...
5
Fair world, where are you? Return again,
sweet springtime of nature!
Alas, only in the magic land of song
does your fabled memory live on.
The deserted fields mourn,
no god reveals himself to me;
of that warm, living image
only a shadow has remained.
12
Translation of No 5 © Richard Wigmore
Texts
Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Six Songs, Op 48
1 Gruss
Leise zieht durch mein Gemüt
Liebliches Geläute.
Klinge, kleines Frühlingslied,
Kling hinaus ins Weite.
Zieh hinaus, bis an das Haus,
Wo die Veilchen spriessen.
Wenn du eine Rose schaust,
Sag, ich lass’ sie grüssen.
A sweet sound of bells
peals gently through my soul.
Ring out, little song of spring,
ring out far and wide.
Ring out till you reach the house
where violets are blooming.
And if you should see a rose,
send to her my greeting.
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)
2 Dereinst, Gedanke mein
Dereinst,
Gedanke mein
Wirst ruhig sein.
One day,
my thoughts,
you shall be at rest.
Lässt Liebesglut
Dich still nicht werden:
In kühler Erden
Da schläfst du gut;
Dort ohne Liebe
Und ohne Pein
Wirst ruhig sein.
Though love’s ardour
gives you no peace,
you shall sleep well
in cool earth;
there without love
and without pain
you shall be at rest.
Was du im Leben
Nicht hast gefunden,
Wenn es entschwunden
Wird’s dir gegeben.
Dann ohne Wunden
Und ohne Pein
Wirst ruhig sein.
What you did not
find in life
will be granted you
when life is ended.
Then, free from torment
and free from pain,
you shall be at rest.
3 Lauf der Welt
An jedem Abend geh’ ich aus,
Hinauf den Wiesensteg.
Sie schaut aus ihrem Gartenhaus,
Es stehet hart am Weg.
Wir haben uns noch nie bestellt,
Es ist nur so der Lauf der Welt.
Every evening I go out,
up the meadow path.
She looks out from her summer house,
which stands close by the road.
We’ve never planned a rendezvous,
it’s just the way of the world.
Ich weiss nicht, wie es so geschah,
Seit lange küss’ ich sie,
Ich bitte nicht, sie sagt nicht: ja!
Doch sagt sie: nein! auch nie.
Wenn Lippe gern auf Lippe ruht,
Wir hindern’s nicht, uns dünkt es gut.
I don’t know how it came about,
for a long time I’ve been kissing her,
I don’t ask, she doesn’t say yes!
But neither does she ever say no!
When lips are pleased to rest on lips,
we don’t prevent it, it just seems good.
13
Emanuel von Geibel (1815–84)
Das Lüftchen mit der Rose spielt,
Es fragt nicht: hast mich lieb?
Das Röschen sich am Taue kühlt,
Es sagt nicht lange: gib!
Ich liebe sie, sie liebet mich,
Doch keines sagt: ich liebe dich!
The little breeze plays with the rose,
it doesn’t ask: do you love me?
The rose cools itself with dew,
it doesn’t dream of saying: give!
I love her, she loves me,
but neither says: I love you!
Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862)
4 Die verschwiegene Nachtigall
Unter den Linden,
An der Haide,
Wo ich mit meinem Trauten sass,
Da mögt ihr finden,
Wie wir beide
Die Blumen brachen und das Gras.
Vor dem Wald mit süssem Schall,
Tandaradei!
Sang im Tal die Nachtigall.
Under the lime trees
by the heath
where I sat wth my beloved,
there you may find
how both of us
crushed the flowers and grass.
Outside the wood, with a sweet sound,
tandaradei!
the nightingale sang in the valley.
Ich kam gegangen
Zu der Aue,
Mein Liebster kam vor mir dahin.
Ich ward empfangen
Als hehre Fraue,
Dass ich noch immer selig bin.
Ob er mir auch Küsse bot?
Tandaradei!
Seht, wie ist mein Mund so rot!
I came walking
to the meadow,
my beloved arrived before me.
I was received
as a noble lady,
which still fills me with bliss.
Did he offer me kisses?
Tandaradei!
See how red my mouth is!
Wie ich da ruhte,
Wüsst’ es einer,
Behüte Gott, ich schämte mich.
Wie mich der Gute
Herzte, keiner
Erfahre das als er und ich –
Und ein kleines Vögelein,
Tandaradei!
Das wird wohl verschwiegen sein.
If anyone knew
how I lay there,
God forbid, I’d be ashamed.
How my darling hugged me,
no-one shall know
but he and I –
and a little bird,
tandaradei!
who certainly won’t say a word.
14
Walther von der Vogelweide (c1170–c1230)
5 Zur Rosenzeit
Ihr verblühet, süsse Rosen,
Meine Liebe trug euch nicht;
Blühet, ach! dem Hoffnungslosen,
Dem der Gram die Seele bricht!
You fade, sweet roses,
my love did not wear you;
ah! you bloom for one bereft of hope,
whose soul now breaks with grief!
Jener Tage denk’ ich trauernd,
Als ich, Engel, an dir hing,
Auf das erste Knöspchen lauernd
Früh zu meinem Garten ging;
Sorrowfully I think of those days,
when I, my angel, set my heart on you,
and waiting for the first little bud,
went early to my garden;
Laid all the blossoms, all the fruits
at your very feet,
with hope beating in my heart,
when you looked on me.
Ihr verblühet, süsse Rosen,
Meine Liebe trug euch nicht;
Blühet, ach! dem Hoffnungslosen,
Dem der Gram die Seele bricht!
You fade, sweet roses,
my love did not wear you;
ah! you bloom for one bereft of hope,
whose soul now breaks with grief!
Texts
Alle Blüten, alle Früchte
Noch zu deinen Füssen trug
Und vor deinem Angesichte
Hoffnung in dem Herzen schlug.
6 Ein Traum
Mir träumte einst ein schöner Traum:
Mich liebte eine blonde Maid;
Es war am grünen Waldesraum,
Es war zur warmen Frühlingszeit:
I once dreamed a beautiful dream:
a blonde maiden loved me,
it was in the green woodland glade,
it was in the warm springtime:
Die Knospe sprang, der Waldbach schwoll,
Fern aus dem Dorfe scholl Geläut –
Wir waren ganzer Wonne voll,
Versunken ganz in Seligkeit.
The buds bloomed, the forest stream swelled,
from the distant village came the sound of bells –
we were so full of bliss,
so lost in happiness.
Und schöner noch als einst der Traum
Begab es sich in Wirklichkeit –
Es war am grünen Waldesraum,
Es war zur warmen Frühlingszeit:
And more beautiful yet than the dream,
it happened in reality –
it was in the green woodland glade,
it was in the warm springtime:
Der Waldbach schwoll, die Knospe sprang,
Geläut erscholl vom Dorfe her –
Ich hielt dich fest, ich hielt dich lang
Und lasse dich nun nimmermehr!
The forest stream swelled, the buds bloomed,
from the village came the sound of bells –
I held you fast, I held you long,
and now shall never let you go!
O frühlingsgrüner Waldesraum!
Du lebst in mir durch alle Zeit –
Dort ward die Wirklichkeit zum Traum,
Dort ward der Traum zur Wirklichkeit!
O woodland glade so green with spring!
You shall live in me for evermore –
there reality became a dream,
there dream became reality!
Friedrich Bodenstedt (1819–92)
Translations © Richard Stokes
15
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
About the composers
Matthew Murphy
Film credits include scores for Joshua (2007),
Best Picture nominee The Reader (2008) and the
Sundance selection Kill Your Darlings (2013). As
a performer, arranger and conductor he has
worked with Antony and the Johnsons (The Crying
Light), Björk (Medúlla, Drawing Restraint 9, Volta),
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (The Letting Go), Doveman
(The Conformist), The National (High Violet,
Trouble Will Find Me), Grizzly Bear (Veckatimest),
and Jónsi from Sigur Rós (Go).
Nico Muhly
Nico Muhly
Nico Muhly has written a wide range of work for
soloists, ensembles and organisations, including
Emanuel Ax, Anne Sofie von Otter, Iestyn Davies,
Pekka Kuusisto, New York City Ballet, New York
Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, Philadelphia
Orchestra, American Ballet Theater, Paris Opéra
Ballet, Barbican Centre and the Wigmore Hall.
16
His first full-scale opera, Two Boys, was
commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and
premiered at English National Opera in 2011 and
at the Metropolitan Opera in 2013. Featuring a
libretto by Craig Lucas and direction by Bartlett
Sher, Two Boys chronicles the real-life police
investigation of an online relationship and ensuing
tragedy. Dark Sisters, a chamber opera dealing
with a polygamist family, was commissioned
by the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Music
Theatre Group and the Gotham Chamber Opera,
and was premiered in New York in 2012.
His 2007 debut album, Speaks Volumes, was
released on Bedroom Community, an artist-run
label he co-founded with Icelandic musician
Valgeir Sigurðsson. Since then, Nico Muhly has
collaborated extensively with his labelmates
Sigurðsson, Ben Frost, Sam Amidon and Nadia
Sirota on albums including Mothertongue (2008),
I Drink the Air Before Me (2010) and Drones
(2012). Decca has released two albums of his
music: A Good Understanding (2010), a disc of
choral works recorded by the Los Angeles Master
Chorale under Grant Gershon, and Seeing is
Believing (2012), recorded by Aurora Orchestra
conducted by Nicholas Collon. In 2014 Nonesuch
Records released a live recording of the
Metropolitan Opera’s production of Two Boys.
Nico Muhly was born in Vermont in 1981 and
raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated
from Columbia University with a degree in English
Literature. In 2004, he received a Masters in Music
from the Juilliard School, where he studied under
Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. From his
sophomore year of college, he worked for Philip
Glass as a MIDI programmer and editor for six
years. His writings and full schedule can be found
at www.nicomuhly.com.
Denis Schuler
Denis Schuler
Born in Geneva, Denis Schuler began his studies
on drums and classical percussion, before
studying composition with Nicolas Bolens, Eric
Gaudibert, Michael Jarrell and Emmanuel
Nunes. He earned his degree in 2006. In 2008,
he became the first Swiss composer to win the
International Composition Competition for
Sacred Music in Freiburg. During 2010–11 he
was artist-in-residence at the Swiss Institute in
Rome. He was awarded a residency in Cairo
by the Pro Helvetia Foundation in 2013. He
is also a curator, with a particular interest in
concert programming, performance spaces and
audience reception.
About the composers
His compositions have been commissioned and/
or created by the Geneva Chamber Orchestra,
Ensemble Vortex, Ensemble Phoenix, the Glass
Farm Ensemble, the Nederlands Chamber Choir,
Tetraflûtes, the Béla Quartet and Ensemble Vide,
among others. Denis Schuler has also composed
music for performances at the Schauspielhaus
in Zurich, the Tojo in Bern and the Théâtre de
Carouge and Théâtre du Grütli in Geneva.
In January 2014, NEOS released a disc of his
music.
He has also curated performances and concerts
at the Swiss Institute in Rome, Paris’s Pavillon
Suisse and with the Geneva-based Ensemble
Vide. These projects combine different artistic
disciplines and involve a wide range of
audiences, professionals and young people.
17
Noica Marientreu
As a composer Denis Schuler takes inspiration
from a broad spectrum of sources, including
traditional music, improvisation and notated
music. By mixing and absorbing these influences
he creates something new and personal. His
work also explores the liminal conditions of
listening, especially those approaching silence.
His music demands particular focus, with the ear
picking up on breath and noise.
Nefez Rerhuf
About the performers
Benjamin Appl
Benjamin Appl baritone
German baritone Benjamin Appl is currently a
member of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation
Artists scheme and is an ECHO Rising Stars
artist for the current season. He is also a
Samling Foundation Scholar.
Spring festivals, as part of Graham Johnson’s
Young Songmakers Almanac in London,
his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014 and
appearances at De Singel, Antwerp. Following
his performance with Johnson at the 2012
Klavierfestival Ruhr, he was awarded the
Deutsche Schubert Gesellschaft Schubertpreis.
His many appearances at the Schubertiade
Festival include a ‘Liederabend’, accompanied
by Helmut Deutsch, and performances of Die
schöne Müllerin with Martin Stadtfeld and
Johnson. He made his first appearances at
the BBC Proms earlier this year in Brahms’s
Triumphlied and Orff’s Carmina burana, and
also sang the bass arias in the St Matthew
Passion under Sir Roger Norrington.
18
This season Benjamin Appl’s recitals include
appearances at the Schubertiade Festival
and Wigmore Hall, and venues at which
he performs as part of the ECHO series,
including not only this evening’s recital but
Recent appearances on the opera stage
concerts at BOZAR in Brussels, the Hamburg
include Ernesto (Haydn’s Il mondo della luna)
Laeiszhalle, Paris Philharmonie, Amsterdam
in Augsburg, Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas) at
Concertgebouw and Vienna Konzerthaus. In
Aldeburgh, Dr Falke (Die Fledermaus) in
addition to numerous concert appearances
Regensburg, Schaunard (La bohème) in Munich with the BBC orchestras, he will also sing
with the Munich Radio Orchestra under Ulf
Mahler’s Lieder eine fahrenden Gesellen with
Schirmer, the title-role in Owen Wingrave at the the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and
Banff Festival, Baron Tusenbach (Peter Eötvös’s Mozart’s Requiem and C minor Mass with Les
Three Sisters) at Munich’s Prinzregenten
Violons du Roy under Bernard Labadie.
Theater and at the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin,
and a new commission for the Bregenz Festival Benjamin Appl graduated from the Guildhall
and Konzerthaus Vienna (Bernhard Gander’s
School of Music & Drama, and now continues
Das Leben am Rande der Milchstrasse).
his studies with Rudolf Piernay. He had the
great fortune to be mentored by Dietrich
Recital appearances include the Ravinia,
Fischer-Dieskau.
Rheingau, Oxford Lieder and Heidelberg
Cathy Krier piano
Born in Luxembourg in 1985, Cathy Krier
began taking piano lessons at the Luxembourg
Conservatoire at the age of 5. In 1999 she was
admitted to Pavel Gililov’s masterclass at the
Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne.
In 2000 she recorded Beethoven’s Fourth
Piano Concerto with the Latvian Philharmonic
Chamber Orchestra conducted by Carlo
Jans. In 2005 she joined Cyprien Katsaris for
a four-hand performance at the inauguration
of the Luxembourg Philharmonie. She also
participated in masterclasses given by Robert
Levin, Dominique Merlet and Homero
Francesch, as well as undertaking further studies
with Andrea Lucchesini. In 2007 she performed
in the opening ceremony marking Luxembourg’s
year as European Capital of Culture.
About the performers
In addition to her work as a recitalist, Cathy
Krier has appeared as a soloist with the
Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the
Solistes Européens Luxembourg, L’estro
armonico, Liepaja Symphony Amber Sound
Orchestra and the Latvian Philharmonic
Chamber Orchestra, working with conductors
including Bramwell Tovey, Garry Walker, Pierre
Cao, Yoon K Lee and Atvars Lakstigala.
Her first solo recording, featuring music
by Scarlatti, Haydn, Chopin, Dutilleux and
Müllenbach was released in 2008. More
recently, she has released critically acclaimed
discs of Janáček and Rameau.
19
Cathy Krier
Her international concert engagements
have included performances at the Kennedy
Center, Washington DC, Rolduc Abbey in the
Netherlands and at venues across Austria,
Spain, Germany, Latvia, Andorra, Italy,
France and Belgium. Highlights have included
Pianoplus Bonn and festivals in Liepaja,
Echternach, Naples, Brussels, Louvain, Cagliari
and Limoges, as well as recitals at the K20/K21
Museum in Düsseldorf, the Luxembourg House
in Berlin and at Luxembourg’s Grand Théâtre
and Philharmonie. She has also been Artist-inResidence at the Biermans-Lapôtre Foundation
in Paris and has toured in China and, with the
Berlin Philharmonic Quartet, to Colombia.
Johan Persson
Recent and future recital partners include
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Thomas Allen, Sumi
Jo, Nuccia Focile, Mark Padmore, John Mark
Ainsley, Matthew Rose, Ailyn Pérez, Benjamin
Appl, Markus Werba, Kate Lindsey, Kate
Royal, Dimitri Platanias, Sarah-Jane Brandon,
Roderick Williams, Susana Gaspar, Andrei
Bondarenko, Sylvia Schwartz, Louise Alder and
Adam Plachetka.
Gary Matthewman
Gary Matthewman piano
Gary Matthewman is one of the UK’s leading
song pianists.
20
Recent and forthcoming appearances include
recitals at the Wigmore Hall, New York’s
Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Musikverein and
the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, as well as in
Prague, Lucerne, Madrid, Lisbon, Washington
DC, Toronto, São Paulo, Hong Kong, Beijing,
Melbourne and Sydney. His UK festival
performances include Aldeburgh, Buxton,
Leeds Lieder, Oxford Lieder, Brighton and
Glyndebourne.
Programme produced by Harriet Smith;
printed by Mandatum Ink; advertising by Cabbell
(tel. 020 3603 7930)
As official accompanist for vocal contests,
he has worked for BBC Cardiff Singer of
the World, the ‘Das Lied’ International Song
Competition in Berlin and the Queen Sonja
International Music Competition for singers in
Oslo. He has made numerous live broadcasts
and recordings for BBC Radio 3, and his
recording of Schubert’s Winterreise with
Matthew Rose for Stone Records was released
to critical acclaim last year, featuring as
Recording of the Month in Gramophone and
as CD Review’s Disc of the Week on Radio 3.
In 2009, he conceived the Lied in London
recital series, now a popular fixture on the
London music scene. He is a professor of
vocal repertoire at the Royal College of Music
and song coach for the Jette Parker Young
Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden.