your concert programme here

Renée Fleming
Sunday 9 December 2012 3.00pm
Barbican Hall
Hugo Wolf
Goethe Lieder
Frühling übers Jahr; Gleich und gleich; Die Spröde;
Die Bekehrte; Anakreons Grab
Gustav Mahler
Rückert-Lieder
Ich atmet‘ einen linden Duft!; Liebst du um Schönheit;
Um Mitternacht; Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder; Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen
Interval: 20 minutes
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Fünf Lieder auf Texte von Richard Dehmel
Vorspiel; Ansturm; Letzte Bitte; Stromüber; Auf See
Erich Korngold
Sterbelied, Op. 14 No. 1; Das Heldengrab am Pruth, Op. 9
No. 5; Was du mir bist, Op. 22 No. 1; Das eilende Bachlein,
Op. 27 No. 2
Erich Korngold, after Johann Strauss II
Walzer aus Wien – Frag mich oft
Renée Fleming soprano
Maciej Pikulski piano
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1
Andrew Eccles/Decca
Arnold Schoenberg
Erwartung, Op. 2 No. 1; Jane Grey, Op. 12 No. 1
Vienna: the window to modernity
Frequently, recitals cover whole
centuries of musical history, the
scale ranging from Mozart to
late Romanticism. The singer not
only wants to offer variety to his
or her audience, but also wants
to meet the challenge of coping
with different musical ages,
styles, authors and languages.
In my current programme I
concentrate on a comparatively
short period: There are only
45 years between the Goethe
Songs by Hugo Wolf and Erich
Korngold’s ‘Das Eilende Bächlein’.
But how very much happened in
those few years between 1888 and
1933, between the golden age of
the German and Austro-Hungarian
monarchies and the beginning
of the Third Reich – not only in
world history but also in the field of
culture: Fin de siècle, Art nouveau
and Expressionism, psychoanalysis
and the women’s movement; the
invention of the gramophone
record, film, broadcasting;
the boom of operetta and
the cabaret; the Bauhaus and
New Music movements.
From a musical point of view, it
was one of the richest and most
exciting epochs in history, and
one of the most important creative
centres of those years was Vienna.
It was in Vienna that many key
developments and encounters
took place – not to mention all
the musical circles and salons,
very often led by emancipated
women, where artists met
and inspired one another.
As a representation of the
enormous artistic variety that
originates from those years, today
I would like to present to you
works of five composers of that
epoch whose tracks were closely
linked. Hugo Wolf and Gustav
Mahler, both born in 1860, joined
the class of Robert Fuchs at the
Vienna Academy of Music, but
developed in highly different ways.
Mahler supported the Wunderkind
Erich Korngold and advised
Barbican Classical Music Podcasts
Prior to her recital at the Barbican,
Renée Fleming talks exclusively to us,
revealing the fascinating personal and
musical links between the composers
she will be performing.
Subscribe to our podcast now for more exclusive interviews
with some of the world’s greatest classical artists.
2
Available on iTunes, Soundcloud and the Barbican website.
him to study with Alexander
von Zemlinsky. Zemlinsky and
Mahler, in turn, were connected
through Alma Schindler. She had
a roaring affair with Zemlinsky
before marrying Mahler.
Zemlinsky not only supported
Korngold, but in a unique way
also fostered Arnold Schoenberg.
Later Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde
became Schoenberg’s wife. The
influence of Mahler’s symphonic
works on Schoenberg’s oeuvre
and his 12-tone technique should
not be underestimated. The
deeper one immerses oneself
in that musical epoch, the more
fascinating it becomes.
For me, working on these
musical works was a wonderful
personal journey, not least
because I was shown what
Vienna had been in those years:
the window to modernity.
Renée Fleming
Programme note
Frühling übers Jahr
Gleich und gleich
Die Spröde
Die Bekehrte
Anakreons Grab
After his youthful outpouring of
songs between 1878 and 1883,
Hugo Wolf experienced long
bouts of creative torpor. These
were the years when he earned his
living primarily as Vienna’s most
barbed music critic, indulging,
inter alia, in his fanatical hatred
of Brahms’s music. It was only in
February 1888 that the floodgates
opened. As Wolf wryly put it:
‘Eventually, after much groping
around, the button came undone.’
The upshot was the 53 songs of
the Mörike Songbook, composed
in two torrential bursts that year.
A letter to his friend Edmund
Lang gives an idea of the manicdepressive Wolf’s state of mind.
I have just written down a
new song, a divine song, I
tell you … I feel my cheeks
glow like molten iron with
excitement, and this state of pure
inspiration is to me exquisite
torment, not pure happiness.
Even before he had penned his
final Mörike song Wolf was pitting
himself against the greatest and
most universal of the German
poets, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe. In another surge of
euphoric creativity, he composed
the 51 songs that make up his
Goethe Songbook between
October 1888 and February 1889.
As with the Mörike Songbook,
Wolf arranged the Goethe songs
in thematic groups, beginning
with the Harper and Mignon
songs from Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre (and thus challenging the
settings of Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann et al) and ending
with the great philosophical
trinity, ‘Prometheus’, ‘Ganymed’
and ‘Grenzen der Menschheit’,
likewise set by Schubert.
The Goethe Songbook also
includes a group of lyrics that the
poet deemed especially suitable
for singing, four of which Renée
Fleming includes in her recital.
Two are flower-songs of exquisite
delicacy: ‘Frühling übers Jahr’,
whose chiming, shimmering moto
perpetuo accompaniment was
surely inspired by Goethe’s image
of the swaying snowdrop bells;
and the tiny, diaphanous ‘Gleich
und gleich’. ‘Die Spröde’ and ‘Die
Bekehrte’ are piquant settings of
a pair of Goethe poems in the
rococo pastoral convention, the
first blithely coquettish, the second
rueful, with the piano evoking both
the faithless Damon’s flute and
rustic musette drones. The finest of
these Goethe songs, both as poetry
and as music, is ‘Anakreons Grab’,
a tender, tranquil meditation
on the Greek poet traditionally
associated with the beauties of
nature, the delights of the grape,
love and song. As so often, Wolf’s
keyboard writing here suggests
the textures of a string quartet.
Gustav Mahler
(1860–1911)
Rückert-Lieder –
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Liebst du um Schönheit
Um Mitternacht
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen
As Mörike was to Wolf, and Heine
to Schumann, so Friedrich Rückert
(1788–1866) – poet, philologist,
orientalist – was to Mahler. The
composer identified profoundly
with the mingled directness and
refined sensibility of his verses,
declaring that ‘after Des Knaben
Wunderhorn I could not compose
anything but Rückert – this is lyric
poetry from the source, all else is
lyric poetry of a derivative kind’.
Apart from the earliest, ‘Um
Mitternacht’, all of the so-called
Rückert-Lieder were written in the
idyllic lakeside setting of Maiernigg
in Carinthia, where Mahler had
built a summer villa as a refuge
from the habitual turbulence of
the Viennese opera season. Four
of the songs were completed, in
both piano and orchestral versions,
by August 1901. A fifth, the
radiant ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’,
followed a year later, as a gift to
his new bride, Alma Schindler. It is
Mahler’s only overt love song, and
the only one of the Rückert-Lieder
he never orchestrated, doubtless
because of its intensely personal
significance. When a plausibly
Mahlerian orchestral version by
the Leipzig musician-cum-critic
Max Puttmann appeared in 1916,
Alma, predictably, protested.
In response to Rückert’s delicate,
intimate verses, the five so-called
Rückert-Lieder are, with one
exception, Mahler’s most tender
and lyrical songs. ‘Ich atmet’ einen
linden Duft!’ is an enchanting
evocation of drowsy summer
murmurings. Mahler himself
spoke of the song as expressing
‘the feeling one experiences in
the presence of someone one
loves and of whom one is quite
sure, two minds communicating
without any need for words’. He
regarded ‘Blicke mir nicht in die
Lieder’ (‘Look not into my songs’:
he hated anyone prying into his
unfinished works!) as the least
3
Hugo Wolf (1860–1903)
Goethe Lieder –
important of the Rückert-Lieder –
and the one that would find most
favour with the public! But it is a
beguiling miniature scherzo, set
in motion by a buzzing sotto voce
accompaniment prompted by the
apian imagery in the second verse.
‘Um Mitternacht’ is the odd
one out in this group, a song of
stark, hieratic grandeur. After
the anxious spiritual questioning
of the opening verses, the final
one moves from minor to major
for a triumphant apotheosis as
the poet surrenders his strength
to God’s hands. Contrary to
Mahler’s prediction, the most
celebrated of the Rückert songs
is ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden
gekommen’, a vocal counterpart
to the famous Adagietto of the
Fifth Symphony. Its text, on the
familiar Romantic theme of
withdrawal into a secluded world
of art and nature, had a deep
personal appeal to Mahler, who
said of it: ‘It is my very self’. For
all its rapt, timeless lyricism (the
dynamics never rise above piano),
the song is almost symphonically
conceived, with an intricate
contrapuntal interplay between
voice and accompaniment.
INTERVAL
Arnold Schoenberg
(1874–1951)
Erwartung, Op. 2 No. 1
Jane Grey, Op. 12 No. 1
4
Arnold Schoenberg, the archsubverter of musical tradition,
always vehemently denied that he
was a revolutionary. He was, he
protested, merely perpetuating
the great Austro-German tradition
from Bach through the Viennese
Classics to Brahms, Wagner and
Mahler. When his early works
– above all the string sextet
Verklärte Nacht, a declaration of
love to his future wife, Mathilde
Zemlinsky – were praised at the
expense of his 12-tone music, he
retorted by saying that the only
differences were that his later
works possessed greater clarity
and economy. Schoenberg knew
this was at best a half-truth. But it
was always important for him to
emphasise continuity rather than
disruption. And in no genre is this
sense of tradition more apparent
than the Lied: indeed, there is a
gradual, logical progression from
his early, unpublished songs to
the Expressionist Stefan George
cycle Das Buch der hängenden
Gärten (1908–09), in which
virtually all traces of conventional,
structural harmony disappear.
Schoenberg’s encounter with the
work of the Prussian poet Richard
Dehmel (1863–1920) in the mid1890s had important creative
repercussions, most obviously
in Verklärte Nacht. Dehmel’s
thought was heavily influenced
by the philosophy of Nietzsche,
and his view of regeneration and
redemption through the power of
the ‘inner spirit’. But there are other
strands in his poetry, including
a devotion to socialist ideals, a
fin de siècle eroticism and, most
importantly for Schoenberg, the
relationship between man and
woman, which Dehmel expressed
with both tenderness and with a
frankness that shocked the prudish
contemporary bourgeoisie.
Dating from 1899 (and not
to be confused with the later
monodrama of the same name),
‘Erwartung’ sets a Dehmel
poem of sexual anticipation
that foreshadows the nocturnal
encounter between two lovers in
Verklärte Nacht, composed shortly
afterwards. Schoenberg’s musical
language is still within hailing
distance of Wolf’s, though the
luminous, deliquescent keyboard
writing sometimes threatens
to dissolve tonal outlines.
The impassioned, elegiac
‘Jane Grey’, to verses by
Heinrich Ammann on the young
noblewoman who became Queen
of England for just nine days
in 1553, is one of two ballads
Schoenberg composed in 1907 in
response to a Berlin competition
for new ballad settings. Neither it
nor its companion, ‘Der verlorene
Haufen’, won: hardly surprising
given their dense, complex
textures and, especially, their
‘vagrant’ (Schoenberg’s term)
harmonic language that often
teeters on the edge of atonality.
From here it is only a short step
to Das Buch der hängenden
Gärten, begun the same year.
Alexander von Zemlinsky
(1871–1942)
Fünf Lieder auf Texte
von Richard Dehmel –
Vorspiel
Ansturm
Letzte Bitte
Stromüber
Auf See
Although Alexander von
Zemlinsky’s earlier works enjoyed
a vogue in pre-First World War
Vienna, by the 1920s he was
already in eclipse. By then his style
was considered too progressive for
the traditionalists (whose idol was
Korngold) and too conservative
for the adherents of Schoenberg,
his former pupil and brotherin-law. Zemlinsky came close
to the line, but never followed
Schoenberg into the brave new
world of atonality, summing up
Programme note
Zemlinsky had an intuitive empathy
for poetry and wrote Lieder,
often of strikingly concentrated
intensity, throughout his career.
Like Schoenberg, he entered
a setting of ‘Jane Grey’ for the
1907 Berlin ballad competition,
and was likewise unsuccessful
(the prizes went to men we would
now describe as composing
nonentities). Zemlinsky also
shared Schoenberg’s attraction
to the then daringly erotic poetry
of Richard Dehmel, and in
December of the same year he
composed a cycle of five songs
about a doomed adulterous
affair. Influenced by Schoenberg’s
extreme chromaticism, these
disquieting, epigrammatic songs,
each unified by a single keyboard
motif or pattern, may have been
prompted by Zemlinsky’s concern
at the affair between his sister
Mathilde, married to Schoenberg,
and the painter Richard Gerstl.
Gerstl would commit suicide after
Mathilde returned to her husband
in the autumn of the following
year, 1908. The affair permanently
damaged Zemlinsky’s relationship
with Schoenberg, and, as his
biographer Antony Beaumont
has suggested, may have been
the prime reason why he never
published the Dehmel songs.
Erich Korngold
(1897–1957)
Sterbelied, Op. 14 No. 1
Das Heldengrab am
Pruth, Op. 9 No. 5
Was du mir bist, Op. 22 No. 1
Das eilende Bächlein,
Op. 27 No. 2
Erich Korngold,
after Johann Strauss II
(1825–99)
Walzer aus Wien –
Frag mich oft
‘I never wanted to compose. I only
did it to please my father’, remarked
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, perhaps
a touch disingenuously. Reluctant
or otherwise, the young Erich,
carefully nurtured by his ambitious,
domineering father Julius Korngold
– Eduard Hanslick’s successor as
Vienna’s most powerful music critic
– was one of the most dazzling
musical prodigies in history. At 5
he was dubbed ‘the little Mozart’
and he amazed Richard Strauss
with the sophistication and finish of
his compositions (‘this assurance of
style, this mastery of form, this bold
harmony …’). Just after Korngold’s
10th birthday an equally astonished
Mahler pronounced him ‘A genius!
A genius!’ In adulthood the former
Wunderkind would rival Richard
Strauss as a composer of successful
operas (Die tote Stadt, Das Wunder
der Heliane) and instrumental music.
After his music was condemned
as ‘entartet’ – ‘degenerate’ –
by the Nazis, he escaped to
the United States to reinvent
himself, like his contemporary
Kurt Weill, as a composer for
Broadway and Hollywood.
Korngold wrote his first songs
at 7. As a seasoned pro of 14
he assembled a collection of 12
Eichendorff songs as a birthday
gift to his father. Five years later,
in 1916, he selected three of these,
added three more and published
them as Sechs einfache Lieder
(‘Six simple songs’), Op. 9. One of
these, the not-so-simple threnody
‘Das Heldengrab am Pruth’, with its
bitonality (the piano right and left
hands playing in keys a semitone
apart) and distorted fragments
of birdsong, commemorates the
terrible Austrian losses on the
River Prut, now in Romania. That
same year, 1916, Korngold was
working on the sombre, warinspired collection of Lieder des
Abschieds (‘Songs of Farewell’), of
which ‘Sterbelied’ sets a German
translation of Christina Rossetti’s
‘When I am dead, my dearest, Sing
no sad songs for me’. That Richard
Strauss’s admiration for Korngold
was reciprocated is evident in the
song’s broad, elegiac melody,
luxuriant keyboard textures and
side-slipping chromatic harmonies.
A gorgeously decadent (very) lateRomantic chromaticism also suffuses
the fervent love song ‘Was du mir
bist’, from the Op. 22 collection
published in 1929, when Korngold
was at the zenith of his fame. ‘Das
eilende Bächlein’, composed in
the summer of 1933, was one of
Korngold’s last songs. The imagery
in Eleonore van der Straten’s
carpe diem poem inevitably calls
to mind Schubert’s Die schöne
Müllerin, though in Korngold’s
hands the ‘Bächlein’ is more surging
torrent than babbling brooklet.
Like his father before him, Korngold
was a passionate admirer of
Strauss’s operettas, making a
lucrative second career in the
1920s and early 1930s adapting
them for the Vienna stage. With
fellow-composer Julius Bittner he
also concocted a pasticcio, Walzer
aus Wien (adapted for Broadway
as ‘The Great Waltz’), that draws
on hit numbers from assorted
Strauss operettas, among them the
sumptuous love song ‘Frag mich oft’.
Programme note © Richard Wigmore
5
his credo thus: ‘A great artist, who
possesses everything necessary to
express essentials, must respect
the boundaries of beauty, even if
he extends them much further than
hitherto’. In later years he would
remark wryly, ‘My time will come
after my death.’ This proved all
too true: it is only in the last two
decades, with first performances
of his operas and recordings
of most of his major works, that
Zemlinsky has at last begun to
emerge from the giant shadows
of Mahler on the one hand and
the Schoenberg-led Second
Viennese School on the other.
Hugo Wolf
6
Goethe Lieder
Frühling übers Jahr
Das Beet, schon lockert sich’s in die Höh!
Da wanken Glöckchen so weiss wie Schnee;
Safran entfallet gewalt’ge Glut,
Smaragden keimt es und keimt wie Blut;
Spring all year round
Already new growth is breaking up the flower bed;
snow-white snowdrop bells are swaying there,
crocuses unfold their intense glow,
some budding is emerald, some blood-red.
Primeln stolzieren so naseweis,
Schalkhafte Veilchen versteckt mit Fleiss;
Was such noch alles da regt und webt,
Genug, der Frühling, er wirkt und lebt.
Pert primroses are on parade; roguish violets
are assiduously hidden; so much else
is stirring and moving;
in short, spring is here, active and alive.
Doch was im Garten am reichsten blüht,
Das ist des Liebchens lieblich Gemüt.
Da glühen Blicke mir immerfort,
Erregend Liedchen, erheiternd Wort,
But the richest flowering in all the garden
is the sweet disposition of my darling:
her ever-glowing glances,
stirring song, enlivening talk,
Ein immer offen, ein Blütenherz,
Im Ernste freundlich und rein im Scherz.
Wenn Ros’ und Lilie der Sommer bringt,
Er doch vergebens mit Liebchen ringt
an ever open, a blossom-heart,
kindly in earnest, and pure in jest.
Even though summer brings rose and lily
it vies with my love in vain.
Gleich und gleich
Ein Blumenglöckchen
Vom Boden hervor
War früh gesprosset
In lieblichem Flor;
Da kam ein Bienchen
Und naschte fein: –
Die müssen wohl beide
Für einander sein.
Like to like
A little flower-bell
had sprouted early
from the ground
with a lovely little flourish;
there came a little bee
and sipped it delicately:
they must have been made
for each other.
Die Spröde
An dem reinsten Frühlingsmorgen
Ging die Schäferin und sang,
Jung und schön und ohne Sorgen,
Dass es durch die Felder klang,
So lala! Lerallala!
The coy shepherdess
On the clearest of spring mornings
the shepherdess went walking and singing,
young and fair and carefree,
so that it resounded through the fields –
So lala! Lerallala!
Thyrsis bot ihr für ein Mäulchen
Zwei, drei Schäfchen gleich am Ort,
Schalkhaft blickte sie ein Weilchen;
Doch sie sang und lachte fort:
So lala! Lerallala!
Thyrsis offered her, just for one kiss,
two lambkins, three, on the spot.
She looked at him roguishly for a while,
but then went on singing and laughing:
So lala! Lerallala!
Texts
Und ein Andrer bot ihr Bänder,
Und der Dritte bot sein Herz;
Doch sie trieb mit Herz und Bändern
So wie mit den Lämmern Scherz,
Nur lala! Lerallala!
And another offered her ribbons,
and the third his heart;
but she jested with heart and ribbons
as with the lambs:
Just lala! Lerallala!
Die Bekehrte
Bei dem Glanz der Abendröte
Ging ich still den Wald entlang,
Damon sass und blies die Flöte,
Dass es von den Felsen klang,
So la la! …
The repentant shepherdess
In the red glow of sunset
I walked silently through the wood.
Damon sat and blew his flute
so that the rocks resounded:
So la la! …
Und er zog mich an sich nieder,
Küsste mich so hold und süss.
Und ich sagte: Blase wieder!
Und der gute Junge blies,
So la la! …
And he drew me down to him
and kissed me so gently, so sweetly,
and I said ‘blow again’
and the good-hearted lad blew:
So la la! …
Meine Ruhe ist nun verloren,
Meine Freude floh davon,
Und ich höre vor meinen Ohren
Immer nur den alten Ton,
So la la, le ralla! …
My peace of mind is now lost,
my joy has flown away,
and I hear in my ears
only the old tones of
So la la, le ralla! …
Anakreons Grab
Wo die Rose hier blüht,
Wo Reben um Lorbeer sich schlingen,
Wo das Turtelchen lockt,
Wo sich das Grillchen ergötzt,
Welch ein Grab ist hier,
Das alle Götter mit Leben
Schön bepflanzt und geziert?
Es ist Anakreons Ruh.
Frühling, Sommer und Herbst
Genoss der glückliche Dichter;
Vor dem Winter hat ihn endlich
Der Hügel geschützt.
Anacreon’s grave
Here, where the rose blooms,
where vines entwine the laurel,
where the turtledove flirts,
where the cricket delights –
what grave is this here,
that all the gods and Life
have so prettily decorated with plants?
It is Anacreon’s grave.
Spring, summer and autumn
did that happy poet enjoy;
from winter now finally,
this mound has protected him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Gustav Mahler
Rückert-Lieder
I breathed a gentle scent!
I breathed a gentle scent!
In the room stood a branch of linden,
A gift from a dear hand.
How lovely was the scent of linden!
7
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Im Zimmer stand ein Zweig der Linde,
Ein Angebinde von lieber Hand.
Wie lieblich war der Lindenduft!
8
Wie lieblich ist der Lindenduft!
Das Lindenreis brachst du gelinde!
Ich atme leis im Duft der Linde
Der Liebe linden Duft.
How lovely is the scent of linden!
That sprig of linden you gathered gently!
I breathe softly amid the scent of linden
Love’s gentle scent.
Liebst du um Schönheit
Liebst du um Schönheit, o nicht mich liebe!
Liebe die Sonne, sie trägt ein gold’nes Haar!
If you love for beauty
If you love for beauty, oh, do not love me!
Love the sun, she has golden hair!
Liebst du um Jugend, o nicht mich liebe!
Liebe der Frühling, der jung ist jedes Jahr!
If you love for youth, oh, do not love me!
Love the spring, which every year is young!
Liebst du um Schätze, o nicht mich liebe!
Liebe die Meerfrau, sie hat viel Perlen klar.
If you love for treasures, oh, do not love me!
Love the mermaid, she has many shining pearls!
Liebst du um Liebe, o ja, mich liebe!
Liebe mich immer, dich lieb’ ich immerdar.
If you love for love, oh yes, do love me!
Love me always: I’ll love you forever!
Um Mitternacht
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich gewacht
Und aufgeblickt zum Himmel;
Kein Stern vom Sterngewimmel
Hat mir gelacht
Um Mitternacht.
At midnight
At midnight
I awoke
and gazed to heaven;
no star of that starry throng
did smile on me
at midnight.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich gedacht
Hinaus in dunkle Schranken.
Es hat kein Lichtgedanken
Mir Trost gebracht
Um Mitternacht.
At midnight
my thoughts
went out to the utmost darkness.
No shining thought
brought me comfort
at midnight.
Um Mitternacht
Nahm ich in acht
Die Schläge meines Herzens;
Ein einz’ger Puls des Schmerzes
War angefacht
Um Mitternacht.
At midnight
I marked
the beating of my heart;
one single pulse of agony
was stirred to life
at midnight.
Um Mitternacht
Kämpft’ ich die Schlacht,
O Menschheit, deiner Leiden;
Nicht konnt’ ich sie entscheiden
Mit meiner Macht
Um Mitternacht.
At midnight
I fought the battle,
of your afflictions, O humanity;
I was not able to decide it
with my strength
at midnight.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich die Macht
In deine Hand gegeben:
Herr! Über Tod und Leben
Du hälst die Wacht
Um Mitternacht!
At midnight
I gave my strength
into your hand:
Lord, over death and life
you keep watch
at midnight!
Texts
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!
Meine Augen schlag’ ich nieder,
Wie ertappt auf böser Tat;
Selber darf ich nicht getrauen,
Ihrem Wachsen zuzuschauen:
Deine Neugier ist Verrat.
Look not into my songs!
Look not into my songs!
My eyes I lower,
as if caught doing wrong;
I cannot trust myself
to watch their growth:
Your curiosity is treachery.
Bienen, wenn sie Zellen bauen,
Lassen auch nicht zu sich schauen,
Schauen selbst auch nicht zu.
Wenn die reichen Honigwaben
Sie zu Tag gefördert haben,
Dann vor allem nasche du!
Bees, when they build their cells,
let no one watch either,
and do not even watch themselves.
When the full honey-combs
they bring to light of day,
then you can nibble!
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange von mir nichts vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!
I am lost to the world
I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time;
it has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!
Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält;
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.
It is of no consequence to me
whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.
Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!
Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!
I am dead to the world’s tumult,
and I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
in my love and in my song!
Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866)
INTERVAL
Erwartung, Op. 2 No. 1
Aus dem meergrünen Teiche
Neben der roten Villa
Unter der toten Eiche
Scheint der Mond.
Expectation
From the sea-green pond
near the red villa
beneath the dead oak
shines the moon.
Wo ihr dunkles Abbild
Durch das Wasser greift,
Steht ein Mann und streift
Einen Ring von seiner Hand.
Where her dark reflection
stretches out through the water
stands a man and takes
a ring from his hand.
9
Arnold Schoenberg
Drei Opale blinken;
Durch die bleichen Steine
Schwimmen rot und grüne
Funken und versinken.
Three opals glitter;
through the pale stones
swim red and green
sparks and sink.
Und er küsst sie, und
Seine Augen leuchten
Wie der meergrüne Grund:
Ein Fenster tut sich auf.
And he kisses her,
and his eyes shine
like the sea-green ground:
a window is opened.
Aus der roten Villa
Neben der toten Eiche
Winkt ihm eine bleiche
Frauenhand.
From the red villa
near the dead oak
a lady’s hand
waves to him
Richard Dehmel (1863–1920)
Jane Grey, Op. 12 No. 1
Sie führten ihn durch den grauen Hof,
Dass ihm sein Spruch gescheh’;
Am Fenster stand sein junges Gemahl,
Die schöne Königin Grey.
Jane Grey
They led him through the grey courtyard,
To which he had been sentenced.
At the window stood his young bride,
The pretty Lady Grey.
Sie bog ihr Köpfchen zum Fenster heraus,
Ihr Haar erglänzte wie Schnee;
Er hob die Fessel klirrend auf
Und grüsste sein Weib Jane Grey.
She bowed her little head outside the window,
Her hair gleaming like snow;
He raised up the clanking chains
And saluted his wife, Jane Grey.
Und als man den Toten vorüber trug,
Sie stand damit sie ihn seh’;
Drauf ging sie freudig denselben Gang,
Die junge Königin Grey.
And as the dead were carried past,
She stood so that she could see him;
Whereupon she went gladly the same way,
The young Lady Grey.
Der Henker, als ihm ihr Antlitz schien,
Er weinte laut auf vor Weh,
Dann eilte nach in die Ewigkeit
Dem Gatten Königin Grey.
The executioner, as her visage shone upon him,
Cried aloud in pain,
Then hastened toward eternity
The Queen Consort Grey.
Viel junge Damen starben schon
Vom Hochland bis zur See,
Doch keine war schöner und keuscher noch
Als Dudleys Weib Jane Grey.
Many young women go to their deaths
From the Highlands to the sea,
But none more beautiful or chaste
Than Dudley’s wife, Jane Grey.
Und wenn der Wind in den Blättern spielt
Und er spielt in Blumen und Klee,
Dann flüstert’s noch oft vom frühen Tod
Der jungen Königin Grey.
And when the wind rustles the foliage
And plays through the flowers and clover,
One can still hear it whisper of the untimely death
Of the young Lady Grey.
10
Heinrich Ammann (1864–?)
Texts
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Vorspiel
Sie ist nur durch mein Zimmer gegangen
Und hat mir scheu von Träumen erzählt;
Und ich hab’ sie mit Trost gequält
Und sass und starb fast vor Verlangen.
Prelude
She just moved through my room
and timidly recounted her dreams to me;
and I tortured her with comfort
and sat and nearly died of longing.
Sie hat geträumt von meinen Händen:
Sie ass von ihres Mannes Brot,
Da kam ich an und drückte sie tot,
Sie hielt ganz still. Wie wird das enden?
She had dreamed of my hands:
she was eating her husband’s bread,
then I came in and hugged her to death,
she kept quite still. How will it end?
Ansturm
O zürne nicht, wenn mein Begehren
Brausend aus seinen Grenzen bricht.
Soll es mich selber nicht verzehren,
Muss es heraus ans Licht!
Onslaught
O be not angry, when my desire
Darkly breaks through its boundaries,
If it is not to consume us,
It has to come out to the light!
Fühlst ja, wie all mein Innres brandet!
Und wenn herauf der Aufruhr bricht,
Jäh über deinen Frieden strandet,
Dann bebst du aber du zürnst mir nicht.
You clearly can feel how I churn inside,
And when my rapture breaks to the surface,
Abruptly inundates your peace,
Then you tremble but are not angry with me.
Letzte Bitte
Leg’ deine Hand auf meine Augen
Dass mein Blut wie Meeresnächte dünkelt:
Fern im Nachen lauscht der Tod.
Last request
Lay your hand upon my eyes
that my blood may darken like nights upon the sea:
from a distant vessel Death attends.
Leg’ deine Hand auf meine Augen,
Bis mein Blut wie Himmelsnächte funkelt:
Silbern rauscht das schwarze Boot.
Lay your hand upon my eyes
until my blood glistens like the night sky:
the black boat glides like silver.
Stromüber
Der Abend war so dunkelschwer
Und schwer durchs Dunkel schnitt der Kahn.
Die Andern lachten um uns her
Als fühlten sie den Frühling nahn.
Over the river
The evening was dark and heavy
and heavily through the darkness cut the barge.
The others laughed after us
as if they felt the approach of spring.
Der weite Strom lag stumm und fahl,
Am Ufer floss ein schwankend Licht,
Die Weiden standen starr und kahl.
Ich aber sah dir ins Gesicht
The wide river lay soundless and torpid,
at the water’s edge floated a wavering light,
the willows stood fixed and stark.
But I looked into your visage
Und fühlte deinen Atem flehn
Und deine Augen nach mir schrein
Und eine Andre vor mir stehn
Und heiss aufschluchzen: Ich bin dein!
and felt your breathing implore
and your eyes cry after me
and another stood before me
and hotly sobbed: I am yours!
11
Fünf Lieder auf Texte von
Richard Dehmel
Das Licht erglänzte nah und mild;
Im grauen Wasser schwarz, verschwand
Der starren Weiden zitternd Bild.
Knirschend stiess der Kahn ans Land.
The light shone gently nearby;
in the grey water black, disappeared
the rigid willows’ trembling image.
The barge creakily ran aground.
Auf See
Doch hatte niemals tiefere Macht dein Blick,
Als du da, Abschied fühlend, still am Ufer
Standest, schwandest; nur der Blick noch
Blieb und bebte über dem Wasser.
On the sea
Your gaze never had deeper power,
than when you there, feeling our parting, still on
the bank
stood, receding; only your gaze still
remained trembling over the water.
Dunkel folgte der Schein den leuchtenden Furchen;
Und ich sah den Schein der tiefen Flut,
Sah dein weisses Kleid zerfliessen:
Du Seele, Seele! –
Darkness followed the shine of the glimmering wake;
and I saw the appearance of the deep tide,
saw your white dress fading away:
you spirit, spirit! –
Richard Dehmel
Erich Korngold
Sterbelied, Op. 14 No. 1
Lass Liebster, wenn ich tot bin,
lass du von Klagen ab.
Statt Rosen und Cypressen
Wächst Gras auf meinem Grab.
Ich schlafe still im Zwielichtschein
In schwerer Dämmernis –
Und wenn du willst, gedenke mein
Und wenn du willst, vergiss.
Song
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
Ich fühle nicht den Regen,
Ich seh’ nicht, ob es tagt,
Ich höre nicht die Nachtigall,
Die in den Büschen klagt.
Vom Schlaf erweckt mich keiner,
Die Erdenwelt verblich.
Vielleicht gedenk ich deiner,
Vielleicht vergass ich dich.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
12
Christina Rossetti (1830–94), translated by Richard
Maux (1873–1971)
Texts
Das Heldengrab am Pruth, Op. 9 No. 5
Ich hab ein kleines Gärtchen im Buchenland am Pruth,
Betaut von Perlentropfen, umstrahlt von Sonnenglut.
The hero’s grave on the Prut
I have a little garden in Bukovina on the Prut,
bedewed with pearl-drops, radiant with the blazing
heat of the sun.
Und bin in meinem Gärtchen im Traume wie bei Tag
Und trink den Duft der Blumen und lausch dem
Vogelschlag.
And I daydream in my little garden
and drink in the flowers’ fragrance and listen to
birdcalls.
Wenn auch der Tau erstarret, der Herbst die Blümlein
bricht,
Die Nachtigall enteilet, der Lenz entflieht mir nicht.
And when the dew turns to frost, when autumn fells the
little flowers,
the nightingale departs, springtime does not escape
me.
Es schmückt mein kleines Gärtchen im Buchenland am
Pruth,
Mit welkem Laub die Liebe dem Helden, dem Helden
der drinn ruht.
It bedecks my little garden in Bukovina on the Prut,
with withered leaves of a hero’s love, a hero who rests
therein.
Heinrich Kipper (1875–1959)
Was du mir bist?, Op. 22 No. 1
Was du mir bist?
Der Ausblick in ein schönes Land,
Wo fruchtbelad’ne Bäume ragen,
Blumen blühn am Quellenrand.
What are you to me?
What are you to me?
The vista o’er a lovely land,
where fruit-laden trees rise up,
flowers blossom on the teeming periphery.
Was du mir bist?
Der Stern Funkeln, das Gewölk durchbricht,
Der ferne Lichtstrahl, der im Dunkeln spricht:
O Wand’rer, verzage nicht!
What are you to me?
The radiance of stars, breaking through cloud,
the distant ray of light, that beams through the
darkness:
O Wanderer, do not despair!
Und war mein Leben auch Entsagen,
Glänzte mir kein froh Geschick –
Was du mir bist? Kannst du noch fragen?
Mein Glaube an das Glück.
And were my life to be renounced,
were there no bright future for me –
what are you to me? Can you still ask?
My belief in happiness.
Das Eilende Bachlein, Op. 27 No. 2
Bächlein, Bächlein, wie du eilen kannst,
Rasch, geschäftig ohne Rast und Ruh’!
Wie du Steinchen mit dir nimmst –
Schau’ dir gerne zu!
The rushing little brook
Little brook, how you rush on your way
swift and busy, without rest or repose!
How you take the pebbles along with you,
I love watching you!
Doch das Bächlein spricht zu mir:
‘Siehst du, liebes Kind,
Wie die Welle eilt und rast
Und vorüberrinnt?’
But the little brook says to me:
‘Do you see, dear child,
how the wave hurries and races
and rushes past?
13
Eleonore van der Straaten (1845–?)
‘Jeder Tropfen ist ein Tag,
Jede Welle gleicht dem Jahr –
Und du, – du stehst am Ufer nur,
Sagst dir still: es war.’
‘Each drop is a day,
each wave is like a year.
And you are only standing on the bank,
and saying to yourself: It is past.’
Eleonore van der Straten
Erich Korngold, after Johann Strauss II
Walzer aus Wien
Frag mich Oft
Frag’ mich oft,
Woran’s den wohl liegt,
Dass Musik entgegen mir fliegt,
Dass die holde Muse mich küsst.
Doch ich glaub’,
Ich Weiss schon,
Was Schuld daran ist.
I often wonder
I often wonder
how it is
that music just comes flying to me,
that I’m kissed by the graceful Muse,
but I think
I know
what the answer is.
So lang’s noch Burschen gibt in Wien,
So lang gibt’s Wiener Melodien,
So lang’s im Prater grunt und blüht,
Ja so lange gibt’s ein Wiener Lied,
Ändert sich viel auch mit der Zeit,
Bleit uns doch eins:
Die G’mütlichkeit.
D’rum bin ich so verliebt in Wien,
Freu’ mich,
Dass ich ein Wienerin bin.
As long as there are gentlemen in Vienna,
as long as there are Viennese Melodies,
as long as the Prater is in bloom,
as long as there is Viennese song:
even if a lot changes with time,
one thing always remains:
Viennese cosiness.
That’s why I’m so in love with Vienna,
That’s why I’m so happy
To be a Viennese girl.
Käm ich noch eimal auf die Welt,
Wär’ noch kein Beruf für mich b’stellt,
Hätt’ ich einen Wunsch nur allein,
Möcht halt für mein Leb’n gern wieder Musikerin sein!
If I were to be born again,
And if there were still no job for me,
I would have only one wish:
I would love to be a musician again!
So lang’s noch Burschen gibt in Wien,
So lang gibt’s Wiener Melodien,
So lang’s im Prater grunt und blüht,
Ja so lange gibt’s ein Wiener Lied,
Ändert sich viel auch mit der Zeit,
Bleit uns doch eins:
Die G’mütlichkeit.
D’rum bin ich so verliebt in Wien,
Bin stolz d’rauf,
Dass ich ein Wienerin bin.
As long as there are gentlemen in Vienna,
As long as there are Viennese melodies,
As long as the Prater is in bloom,
As long as there is Viennese song,
Even if a lot changes with time,
One thing always remains:
Viennese cosiness.
That’s why I’m so in love with Vienna,
that’s why I’m proud
to be a Viennese girl.
14
Alfred Maria Willner (1859–1929), Heinz Reichert
(1877–1940) and Ernst Marischka (1893–1963)
Renée Fleming soprano
One of the most celebrated
musical ambassadors of our time,
soprano Renée Fleming combines a
sumptuous voice with consummate
artistry and compelling stage
presence. She was named Singer of
the Year at the 2012 ECHO Awards.
In addition to appearing at the
world’s leading opera houses and
concert halls, she has also recently
begun to work in other musical forms
and media, hosting a wide variety
of radio and television broadcasts.
She has sung at many prestigious
events, including the 2006 Nobel
Peace Prize ceremony, the Beijing
Olympics and at the Diamond
Jubilee Concert for HM Queen
Elizabeth II earlier this year.
This year she also made her debut
in the title-role of Strauss’s Ariadne
auf Naxos, in a new production
at Baden-Baden conducted by
Christian Thielemann. She has also
appeared in the title-role of Arabella
She began this season as
Desdemona (Otello) at the
Metropolitan Opera, conducted by
Semyon Bychkov. Next year she will
appear at Carnegie Hall and Lyric
Opera of Chicago in André Previn’s
A Streetcar Named Desire, playing
Blanche Dubois, a role she created
in the world premiere, while in June
she returns to Vienna as the Countess
in Strauss’s Capriccio, conducted by
Christoph Eschenbach. Concerts this
season have included performances
with Christian Thielemann and
the Dresden Staatskapelle and
with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and
the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Her 2012/13 recital schedule
includes concerts in Rio de Janeiro,
São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Quito,
Bogotá, Guayaquil, Paris, Geneva,
London, Vienna, Hong Kong,
Beijing, Guangzhou and Taipei.
In January she gives a duo recital
tour with mezzo-soprano Susan
Graham, which takes in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Desert,
Chicago, New York and Boston.
Her discography features a wide
range of repertoire that has won
her many awards, including three
Grammys. In recent years she has
recorded a diverse range of music,
from Strauss’s Daphne via the
jazz album Haunted Heart to film
soundtracks including The Lord of
the Rings and the theme song for
Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians.
She won her most recent Grammy
in 2010 for Verismo (Decca), a
CD featuring rarely heard Italian
arias. The same year Decca and
Mercury Records released the CD
Dark Hope, in which she covered
songs by indie-rock and pop artists.
Recent DVD releases include
Handel’s Rodelinda, Massenet’s
Thaïs and Rossini’s Armida, all
three in the Metropolitan Opera
‘Live in HD’ series, and Verdi’s
La traviata, filmed at the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden.
The DVD Renée Fleming & Dmitri
Hvorostovsky: A Musical Odyssey
in St Petersburg follows the two
singers to Russia, where they
explore and perform in some of St
Petersburg’s most historic locations.
As a champion of new music she has
performed works by a wide range of
contemporary composers, including
Henri Dutilleux, Brad Mehldau,
André Previn and Wayne Shorter.
Renée Fleming’s numerous awards
include the Fulbright Lifetime
Achievement Medal (2011),
Sweden’s Polar Prize (2008), the
Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur
from the French government
(2005) and honorary membership
of the Royal Academy of Music
(2003); as well as honorary
doctorates from Carnegie Mellon
University, the Eastman School of
Music and The Juilliard School.
In 2010, she was named the
first ever Creative Consultant
for Lyric Opera of Chicago.
www.reneefleming.com
15
Andrew Eccles/Decca
at the Paris Opera and sang the
Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier)
at the Munich Opernfestspiele.
About the performers
About today’s
performers
Maciej Pikulski piano
Cracow-born Maciej Pikulski
has appeared on stage in five
continents as a soloist, chamber
musician and vocal accompanist.
He studied at the Paris
Conservatoire with Dominique
Merlet, before continuing his
studies with Clive Britton. As a
soloist he has performed in Russia,
India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Germany,
Spain, Switzerland, Poland and
Belgium, as well as appearing at
festivals throughout France. He has
performed concertos with French,
Belgian, English, Romanian,
Italian and Polish orchestras.
whom he has recorded sonatas
by Jean Huré, Guy Ropartz and
Henri Duparc. Other prominent
musicians with whom he has
worked include Sonia WiederAtherton, Silvia Marcovici, Marc
Coppey, Olivier Charlier, Laurent
Korcia and Gérard Caussé.
His recordings include
Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto
and solo pieces by Liszt,
Rachmaninov and Chopin.
He now enjoys a flourishing career
as a vocal accompanist too,
working with singers such as José
van Dam, Renée Fleming, Dame
Felicity Lott, María Bayo, Patricia
Petibon and Mireille Delunsch.
In 2004 he was chosen by the
French Chopin Society to perform
in the reconstruction of Chopin’s
last concert in Paris. In 2006
he was invited to take part in a
series of the complete Mozart
keyboard sonatas at the San
Sebastián Festival in Spain.
As a chamber musician, Maciej
Pikulski performs in a duo with
the cellist Raphaël Chrétien, with
Maciej Pikulski is also active
as a teacher, and has given
masterclasses in Shanghai, São
Paulo, Mumbai, Paris, Amsterdam
and Strasbourg. He is a professor
at the San Sebastián Conservatory
and teaches every year at the
Nancy Summer Academy.
maciej-pikulski.org