Professional Documents
Culture Documents
TRACK LISTING
Sophie Bevan
Robin Tritschler
Robin Tritschler
Robin Tritschler
Jonathan McGovern
Jonathan McGovern
0315
0302
0212
0127
0242
0203
7
8
9
10
11
Mary Bevan
Sophie Bevan
Jonathan McGovern
Jonathan McGovern
Jonathan McGovern
0221
0232
0204
0303
0237
12
13
14
15
Robin Tritschler
Mary Bevan
Robin Tritschler
Mary Bevan
0118
0149
0251
0255
1
2
3
4
5
6
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
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Benjamin Appl
Benjamin Appl
Mary Bevan
Allan Clayton
Benjamin Appl
Sophie Bevan
Mary Bevan
0313
0154
0202
0235
0235
0118
0223
27
28
0156
0220
0215
0201
0213
0202
Total playing time: 6505
FOREWORD
I have always had a real affection for Felix Mendelssohn, maybe because we share a
birthday! Ever since I learnt the G minor piano concerto as a teenager, I have loved
his exuberance and his ability to write wonderful melodies.
INTRODUCTION
He has been unjustly neglected as a song composer in comparison with his more
tortured contemporaries, but he has his own distinctive voice and it is wrong to
think of him only as the composer of A Midsummer Nights Dream. He can provide
sunshine like no one else in his Songs of Spring, and yet he can also plumb the
depths of emotion in his settings of Goethe and Eichendorff in songs such as Die
Liebende schreibt and Nachtlied. Indeed, many of his darker songs can stand proudly
beside the greatest of Schumanns renowned Lieder. Furthermore, Mendelssohn also
has a similar knack to Schubert with strophic songs, providing music which can
express three or four different sets of words extremely successfully without any
sense of repetition.
I have hoped to show the immense variety in Mendelssohns song output by inviting
a group of wonderfully imaginative young singers to join me for this recording. Many
of them had not sung Mendelssohn Lieder before, and were all surprised and
delighted with their songs; I hope that you are too, as you listen to this disc, the
first in a series which will record both Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohns
complete song works.
Malcolm Martineau
Until recently, the songs of Felix and Fanny Hensel were subjected to threefold
diminishment or outright damnation: first, anti-Semitism did its best to decry the
originality of artists born Jewish, certain critics dismissed the songs as Victorian
parlour music without the depths of a Schubert or Schumann, and Fanny Hensel was
consigned to the special obscurity designated for 19th-century women who sought
composition as their vocation. In addition, her works were often wrongly described as
carbon copies of her brothers style when in fact, she has a complex voice of her own
now being properly recognised. With the dark clouds of history in abeyance, both
scholarly and recording projects such as this one are paying homage to the manysplendoured songs created by a brothersister pair like none other.
SONGS OF JOURNEYS, DEPARTURES AND GREETINGS FROM AFAR
Given a cultivated, well-to-do family, the Mendelssohns, especially Felix, were able to
travel, and journeys are a frequent theme in the poetic texts they chose for songs. The
twelve songs of Op.9, like those of Op.8, were published in two Hefte, or little volumes,
the first entitled The Youth and songs 7-12 entitled The Maiden. Scheidend is the last
song in the first booklet; in this gentle barcarolle, the persona welcomes leaving home,
past sorrows, and youth behind in order to journey to a distant land terrestrial or
celestial? After the calm beginning, tensions appear at the invocation of sorrow and
only dissolve back to tranquillity at the end of each stanza. The Op.19 setting of the
German-Bohemian poet Egon Eberts Reiselied is more agitated: the journeying persona
bids the waters carry his ardent messages back to the beloved. Mendelssohn
underscores the difference between present sorrows and past forgetfulness of pain with
near-savage accents and a high pitch on the word Schmerzen (sorrows) that we hear
as almost a shriek.
Both Felix and Fanny knew the great poet Heinrich Heine personally, and Fanny
distrusted him in any capacity not poetic. Heine is here, and I do not like him at all,
he is so affected, she wrote to Karl Klingemann in 1829. And yet, ... though for ten
times you may be inclined to despise him, the eleventh time you cannot help
confessing that he is a poet, a true poet! Her brothers Morgengruss tells us that Felix
understood Heines distinctive irony but sought to temper it. Here, Heine combines the
Romantic themes of a lovers farewell and a morning serenade beneath her window in
order to stick pins in both traditions: she doesnt hear him, and the lover consoles
himself by insisting that surely she dreams of him. Mendelssohns persona, sweeter than
the poets, repeats his farewell to no avail and insists over and over again on
himself as the subject of her dreams.
SONGS OF SPRING
Of all 19th-century composers, Felix Mendelssohn was perhaps the most addicted to
spring songs, and we hear six of them there are more on this first disc. The
Frhlingslied, Op.8, No.6, is a setting of a poem in Swabian dialect by Friederike Robert,
who was for a brief while tutored by the Romantic writer Justinus Kerner in Swabia. We
hear springtime delight in the exultant octave leaps at the end of the first phrase for
stanzas 1 and 2, also in the bird-song trills and flourishes for the piano throughout the
second stanza.
An die Entfernte is one of Felixs final works, composed against the backdrop of his grief
over Fannys death on May 14, 1847. Lenaus poetic imagery of withered roses and a
beloved woman far away, the poets exhortation not to journey away from love,
produced this tender gem, in which Mendelssohn lingers at the end on the sweet sound
of the nightingales song lingering on the west wind.
The bouquet of violets at the end of Frhlingslied is our link to Das erste Veilchen on a
poem by a prolific Bohemian writer named Egon Ebert. Time moves swiftly in this finely
wrought song: in the first half, the persona joyfully hails the first violet of spring, and
the music ascends in stages to springtime ecstasy. When the violet dies, surrounded by
summers blossoms, the narrator first calls for an evocative silence, then brings the
flower and its music back to life in a dream of spring.
Fannys setting of her talented, beautiful friend Friederike Roberts poem Das Heimweh is
our first song by her on this series. Fannys strophic setting of Friederikes poem (Heine
called Rike a cousin of the Venus de Milo), part impassioned outcry, part diagnostic
manual on the physical effects of homesickness, already conveys a different approach to
song composition than her brothers; witness the chromatic complexities of the initial
phrase, typical of her style.
Im Frhling from Op.9 on a poem by the Mendelssohns tutor and friend Johann Gustav
Droysen (he was only a year older than Felix) has all the ingredients of a classic
Mendelssohn spring song: rustling motion; rising lines to tell of rising excitement;
throbbing chords to underscore springtime ecstasy; and key words prolonged in the
vocal line while the piano moves delightedly underneath (sss/sweet, sehnt/yearns).
One of the poets most beloved by 19th-century composers was Joseph von Eichendorff,
who held fast to Romanticism while history the Industrial Revolution, the increasing
displacement of aristocratic power by modern bureaucracies moved past him. In his
sonorous verse, a small repertory of recurring words Frhling (spring), Grund
(ground), Haus (house), Stimmen (voices), Wald (forest), and more act as mutable
ciphers for a cosmos made magical by the power of poetry. In the Wanderlied, a young
Romantic poet is lured into the wide world of poetic imagery, with no idea where the
journey will lead him: this is Romanticism in a nutshell, its ecstasy given sounding life
in Mendelssohns setting.
Johann Heinrich Voss (the German Homer) was principally famed for his translations of
the Illiad and the Odyssey into German, but he wrote original poetry as well, including
the irresistible Im Grnen. Mendelssohn sets this paean to the outdoors as the essence
of Schwung (lilt) and thrumming springtime vitality, with a fanfare in the piano at the
start and the repeated vaults into the high treble for the singer that are one hallmark
of a Mendelssohnian spring song.
The diplomatpoet Karl Klingemann, who was both a better-than-average dilettante
composer and an amateur poet, was another friend who supplied Fanny and Felix with
a child. Near the end of Felixs setting, we hear the influence of Baroque music (passed
from Johann Friedrich Fasch to Carl Friedrich Zelter to Felix) when the grief-stricken
parents sing of wandering without surcease through the worlds chaos. The vocal line is
like a chorale cantus firmus beneath which the piano sinks by degrees to a hymn-like
ending. We can also hear the enduring impress of 18th-century music on the
Weihnachtslied, which begins and ends with a Bach-like tolling pitch in the bass and
sounds different permutations of the opening melodic figure throughout different levels
of the texture.
ANTIQUE STRAINS AND VOICES FROM YESTERYEAR
Felixs Erntelied is a darkly beautiful strophic song chorale, folksong, and antique
church modes are all mimicked here about Death the inexorable reaper who mows
down all the lovely flowers/people. At the end, dread becomes joy, with defiantly full
harmonization replacing the stark unison texture of earlier passages, but the darkness
of Mendelssohns music at the end tells us that the fear of death is not so easily
overcome.
The great 17th-century physicianpoet Paul Fleming was famed both for secular love
poetry and religious verse, with Pilgerspruch among the latter. In this cross between a
hymn and an art-song, Mendelssohn repeats and extends the final line of each stanza
in order to drive home the poets message: do not succumb to sorrow; stand fast, and
know that Gods will is best.
Four centuries before Fleming, the medieval Minnesinger (singer of courtly love) Jakob
von Wart, who appears in the Manesse Codex a compendium of Minnesong sang of
the contrast between springtime beauty and a lovelorn persona distant from his
sweetheart (an antique poetic theme) in Maienlied. Another Minnesinger, Heinrich der
tugendhafte Schreiber (Henry the Virtuous Scribe), who also appears in the Manesse
Codex, provided Mendelssohn with the text of his Altdeutsches Lied, a mostly gentle
lament, albeit with brief admixtures of passionate protest, by a persona who compares
BIOGRAPHIES
the futility of his complaints to his beloved with nightingales whose forest songs are
not heard.
6 DUETS OP.63
Felix in 1836 had fallen in love with Ccile Jeanrenaud, whom he would marry the
following year; the tremulous love duet Ich wollt meine Lieb ergsse sich comes from
this period in his life. Eight years later in 1844, when the Op.63 set was published, he
added the newly composed Abschiedslied der Zugvgel (No.2) whose melancholy
migratory birds are emblems of the homeless and sorrowful spirit; the tender and yet
animated vow of eternal love in Gruss (No.3); and the playful Maiglckchen und die
Blmelein (No.6) in Mendelssohns scherzo manner. Herbstlied (No.4) had begun as a
Duet without words in 1836, but then Mendelssohns friend Karl Klingemann applied his
autumnal poem to the piano work in 1844; the result was a duet whose themes mirror
those in the other duets (memories of a round dance, spring turning to winter and joy to
sorrow). German song composers made something of a cult of Robert Burnss poetry, and
the Volkslied (O sh ich auf der Haide dort/O wert thou in the cauld blast) signals its
Scottish origins via drone bass patterns.
Susan Youens
The hunt or chase of love is the subject of a famous folk poem from a famous
anthology: Jagdlied (Mit Lust tt ich ausreiten) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The
Youths Magic Horn of 18051808, edited by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim).
Mendelssohn fills the piano accompaniment to this song with traditional hunting horn
calls that echo and re-echo through the musical forest. A statesman and a poet, Ulrich
von Lichtenstein, famous for his Frauendienst (In the Service of Women), compares the
blossoming forth of spring in yet another Frhlingslied to the blossoming of his spirit
when he thinks of his ladys goodness. In contrast, the persona of Andres Mailied warns
someone himself? of a pretty girls probable treachery to Mendelssohns humorous
music (note the brief drum-rolls in the piano to underscore the repeated warnings, Dont
trust her: shell make a fool of you!).
Her operatic roles for English National Opera include Xenia Boris
Godunov, Despina Cos fan tutte, soprano solos Messiah, Polissena
Radamisto, Yum Yum Mikado, Telair in Rameaus Castor and Pollux and her first Sophie
Der Rosenkavalier. For Garsington Opera she has performed Pamina, Donna Elvira and her
first Susanna and for Welsh National Opera she has sung the title role in The Cunning
Little Vixen. For the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden she has appeared as Waldvogel
Siegfried and Pamina.
An accomplished lieder performer, Robin has given numerous song recitals and has
performed many of the great cycles of the repertoire with leading accompanists
Graham Johnson, Malcolm Martineau, Julius Drake and Simon Lepper. Robin has
appeared at venues such as Wigmore Hall, Kln Philharmonie, Het Concertgebouw and
the Kennedy Centre (Washington DC), and regularly performs at the Aldeburgh
Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and the West Cork
Chamber Music Festival.
Robin joined Welsh National Opera as a principal artist for the 2008/2009 season,
singing Count Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Nemorino (Lelisir damore), Narraboth
(Salom) and Marzio (Mitridate).
Sophie was the recipient of the 2010 Critics Circle award for Exceptional Young Talent.
She was nominated for the 2012 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and was the
recipient of The Times Breakthrough Award at the 2012 South Bank Sky Arts Awards.
Robin Tritschler graduated from the Royal Irish Academy of Music and
the Royal Academy of Music, London. A versatile artist, he is equally at
home performing operas, concerts and song recitals. He has been
awarded a number of prizes including the song prizes at the Kathleen
Ferrier Awards and the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition.
Robin was recently selected by the BBC as a New Generation Artist for
2012-14, which incorporates a ranging of performances and recordings.
Age of Enlightenment; the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart; the
Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra; Orquesta Nacional de Espaa; the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra; and the Britten Sinfonia. With the RT Concert Orchestra, Robin performed
the Messiah before Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the
Vatican State.
In concert, Benjamin has been a featured soloist with the Akademie fr Alte Musik
Berlin, the International Bach Festival Halle, the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg and the
Bach Collegium Zurich. His oratorio appearances include Bachs St John Passion and
Christmas Oratorio, Handels Dettingen Te Deum, Haydns The Creation and Orffs
Carmina Burana. During the 2006 visit of Pope Benedikt XVI to Germany he was the
soloist of songs and psalms, which was broadcast live around the world. In April 2010
he sang Messiah at the St. Madeleine, Paris.
In recital he made his debut at the 2010 Ravinia Festival, Chicago and has since
appeared in recital at the Rheingau Festival, in Bordeaux and Berlin. With Graham
Johnson he has appeared in the Young Songmakers Almanac in London, at the
Festival Heidelberger Frhling, at Antwerp De Singel, the Oxford Lieder Festival, at
the Klavier-Festival Ruhr and took part in the BBC Radio 3 Schubert Week.
Benjamin Appl is a member of Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Live Music Now and is a
recipient of the prestigious German National Academic Foundation award. He was also
awarded a scholarship in 2003 by the Wagner Society. He is the recipient of the 2012
Schubert Prize awarded by the Deutsches Schubert Gesellschaft, Duisburg.
JONATHAN MCGOVERN baritone
A graduate of Kings College London and the Royal Academy of Music (DipRAM),
Jonathan McGovern is winner of the 2nd Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Awards,
the Gold Medal and 1st Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition
in 2010, the Karaviotis Prize at the 2011 Les Azuriales Competition and the Jean
Recent concert appearances include Mendelssohns Elijah with the New York
Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, Berliozs LEnfance du Christ with the Britten Sinfonia and
Sir Mark Elder; Verdis Otello (Cassio) with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin
Davis and Il Tabarro in concert at the BBC Proms with the BBC Philharmonic and
Gianandrea Noseda.
Allan has given lieder recitals at the Cheltenham Festival, the Perth International Arts
Festival in Australia, the Aldeburgh Festival, and Londons Wigmore Hall. He has been
fortunate to work with many outstanding pianists including Paul Lewis, Graham
His recordings include a Gramophone-nominated Otello for LSO Live, a CD and DVD of
Handels Messiah for EMI (which was also broadcast live to cinemas worldwide), a DVD
of Doves The Adventures of Pinocchio, Brittens Michelangelo Sonnets with Malcolm
Martineau, and Joshua (London Handel Society/Laurence Cummings). For Hyperion he
has recorded Lukaszewskis Via Crucis, Messiah with the Britten Sinfonia, and Brittens
St Nicolas.
MALCOLM MARTINEAU piano
Malcolm Martineau was born in Edinburgh, read Music at St
Catharines College, Cambridge and studied at the Royal
College of Music.
Photo: Russell Duncan
On stage, Allans other roles have included Ferrando/Cos fan tutte at the New York City
Opera, Royal Opera House, Opera North, and the Glyndebourne Festival;
Bndict/Batrice et Bndict for Opra Comique, Paris; Castor/Castor et Pollux and
Lysander/A Midsummer Nights Dream for English National Opera; Belmonte/Die
Entfhrung aus dem Serail, Lampwick in the world premiere of Jonathan Doves The
Adventures of Pinocchio, and Camille/The Merry Widow for Opera North; the title role in
Albert Herring for the Glyndebourne Festival and Opra Comique, Paris.
Johnson, Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, James Baillieu, Simon
Lepper and Joseph Middleton, on repertoire such as Schuberts Winterreise and Die
Schne Mllerin, Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge and the songs of Strauss, Wolf,
Britten, Duparc and Tippett amongst others.
SONG TEXTS
Edinburgh Festival (the complete lieder of Hugo Wolf). He has appeared throughout
Europe (including Londons Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal
Opera House; La Scala, Milan; the Chtelet, Paris; the Liceu, Barcelona; Berlins
Philharmonie and Konzerthaus; Amsterdams Concertgebouw and the Vienna Konzerthaus
and Musikverein), North America (including in New York both Alice Tully Hall and
Carnegie Hall), Australia (including the Sydney Opera House) and at the Aix-enProvence, Vienna, Edinburgh, Schubertiade, Munich and Salzburg festivals.
Recording projects have included Schubert, Schumann and English song recitals with
Bryn Terfel (for Deutsche Grammophon); Schubert and Strauss recitals with Simon
Keenlyside (for EMI); recital recordings with Angela Gheorghiu and Barbara Bonney (for
Decca), Magdalena Kozena (for DG), Della Jones (for Chandos), Susan Bullock (for Crear
Classics), Solveig Kringelborn (for NMA); Amanda Roocroft (for Onyx); the complete
Faur songs with Sarah Walker and Tom Krause; the complete Britten Folk Songs for
Hyperion; the complete Beethoven Folk Songs for Deutsche Grammophon; the complete
Poulenc songs for Signum; and Britten Song Cycles as well as Schuberts Winterreise with
Florian Boesch for Onyx.
He was a given an honorary doctorate at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama in 2004, and appointed International Fellow of Accompaniment in 2009. Malcolm
was the Artistic Director of the 2011 Leeds Lieder+ Festival.
Separation
How gently the tide flows!
How tranquilly it bears the boat!
Far away life and the land of my youth!
Far away the pain, which bound me there.
Bear me gently away, O tide, to the far-off land!
Travelling song
Bear greetings of my most loyal heart,
O rushing waves, to my love.
Tell her how unhappy I have been,
Since she and I have been apart.
Morning greeting
The sun is rising over the mountains,
The flock of sheep can be heard from afar;
My dearest, my lamb, my sun
and my joy,
How I should love to see you again!
Homesickness
What is it that checks my breath,
And even stifles sighs?
That always blocks every path,
And drives me to distraction?
It is homesickness! O sound of pain!
O sound of pain, how well my heart
knows you.
Travellers song
Warm air comes in a rush of blue,
Spring, it must be spring!
The sound of horns echoes in the woods,
Bold eyes shine brightly;
And the profusion, ever brighter,
Becomes a magical wild river
Whose cascading welcome
Entices you into the beautiful world.
Songs of Spring
The spring is coming, the sky is blue,
The paths are dry, the breezes warm.
In spring
You flowers drunk with spring,
You moonlit trees!
You cannot speak and are mute,
How sweetly you revel and drink!
10
Du sehnsuchtleuchtend Mondlicht,
Ihr friedlich hellen Sterne
Blickt zu den Blumen still herab.
Euch bleibt der Frhling ferne.
Spring song
In resounding roundelays
The voices of spring are breaking out,
They can no longer be silent,
Their joy is far too great!
Whither, they scarcely know themselves,
Theyre touched by an old, sweet dream!
11
12
Spring song
Springs glorious morning hour
Passes through the dark wood,
A gentle message of love
Blows from heaven through the wood.
In geheimer Laubesnacht
Wird des Vogels Herz getroffen
Von der Liebe Zaubermacht,
Und er singt ein ses Hoffen.
13
14
15
Christmas carol
Arise,
Prepare with true solemnity
To celebrate with thanks the Saviours festival.
Love is the thanks,
The song of praise,
Through which we exalt him, the God of Love.
16
Harvest song
There is a reaper, whose name is Death,
His power comes from God on high,
Today he whets his knife,
It now cuts much better;
Soon hell start reaping
We shall have to suffer.
17
18
Pilgrims prayer
Do not ever cease repenting,
Let your grieving perish!
As God ordains,
Thus shall my will be glad.
May song
One should hear sweet singing
In the meadows everywhere,
Lovely bright song ringing out
Ahead of the nightingale!
Gaze upon the broad meadow,
Gaze upon the bright heath,
See how it has dressed itself
Ready for May.
Mancherhande Blmelein
Lachen aus des Maien Tau
In der lichten Sonne Schein;
Schne Zeit zu werter Schau!
Was soll trsten mir den Mut?
Da mich zwinget Herzensschwere,
Bei der ich viel gerne wre,
Dass die ferne leben tut.
19
20
Altdeutsches Lied
(Heinrich der Tugendhafte Schreiber)
Es ist in den Wald gesungen,
Wenn ich der mein Leiden sage,
Die mein Herz mir hat bezwungen;
Sie hrt nicht auf meine Klage.
Hunting song
With pleasure I ride
Through a green wood,
And there I hear three
Little birds sing pleasantly.
Die
Die
Die
Die
21
22
Spring song
The little birds in the wood
Sing sweet songs,
Beautiful flowers in the meadow
Bloom towards gleaming May.
Ht du dich
(from Des Knaben Wunderhorn)
Take care
23
24
25
26
Greeting
Wherever I walk and gaze,
Through valley, wood and field,
From mountaintop to meadow,
I, lovely gracious lady,
Greet you a thousand times.
Autumn song
Ah, how soon the dance echoes away,
How soon spring grows into winter!
Ah, how soon all happiness
Is changed to sad silence!
27
Volkslied
(Robert Burns, trs. Ferdinand Freiligrath)
Folksong
CHRCD063
CHRCD046
ALSO AVAILABLE...
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