A few weeks ago, while preparing the Christmas articles, I came across a Joseph Marx Lied called Marienlied. The title didn't tell me anything at that time, but when I found it again with the title Marienlied (Ich sehe dich), a music with these words came to mind. Of course! This Lied was made from the same poem as Geistliches Lied (Marie), the Lied by Franz Schubert I had remembered.
Among the musical anniversaries of this new 2025, there is one that the world of Lied will celebrate widely (and I hope we will not be the only ones): the centenary of the birth of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. A great baritone, of course, but above all, a personality without which the genre would not be understood in the second half of the 20th century. And I wanted to begin the year with his [...]
On Christmas days, we look at the children, their excitement, their laughter, their innocence, their eyes that look at everything... And, at some point, we remember with longing that time that the children were us. Don't we? This is the subject of the poem of this week, written by the Austrian poet Christiane Rosalia Frideriks, who used to sign her work as Ada Christen.
From Nazareth to Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary traveled approximately 120 km on foot. Perhaps, at times, Mary was on the back of the donkey that carried the necessary load for the trip (a donkey that Luke does not name, but which it is logical that they carried and is part of the collective imagination). Even so, it was a very hard journey for a woman who was about to give birth.
The 4th of September marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, an event that went virtually unnoticed here in Catalonia. There were some concerts with his music and some magazines that wrote about him, but nothing else. I think it is a pity, because I would have said that a Bruckner Year would have been excellent for spreading his work.