SV16 - An die Nachtigall

The Nightingale - Kay Nielsen

 

As I told you last week, I'll devote the four remaining weeks of August to the Schubertiade Vilabertran, in a similar way to what I did last year: in those four posts, briefly I will go over the six song recitals we are going to listen in Vilabertran, and I'll recover the pieces included in those concerts that we previously listenened on Liederabend.

Today, I'm talking about the first recital, the SV16 opening concert, that will take place on August 18, within eight days. We'll listen to two regular artists at the festival, mezzo-soprano Juliane Banse and pianist Wolfram Rieger, who will perform songs by Brahms, Schubert and Duparc. When reviewing the programme, which is really beautiful, I found five songs we’ve heard so far: two of Brahms, two of Duparc and one of Schubert. And I really chose wonderful versions!

 

To finish this post, we're listening to one more song included in the opening programme, An die Nachtigall, composed by Brahms from a poem originally written by Ludwig Hölty and modified after his death by Johann Heinrich Voss (in fact, he modified many of Hölty's poems). The changes are significant, especially at the second stanza, but that's how Brahms got to know the poem (so did Schubert, who also set to music it). Brahms structured the Lied as a strophic, but only apparently: the composer includes small changes here and there in the second stanza while keeps it quite similar to the first tone, so listeners perceive mostly the repetition. Each stanza begins gently, goes until an intense, moving point and ends smoothly; the voice draws a great arc on the verses. And what about the theme of the song? It's very similar to Die Mainacht: the poet’s feeling of loneliness which is unleashed when a bird sings at night; if at Die Mainacht it was a dove, here, a nightingale.

We'll listen to An die Nachtigall, as in Vilabertran, sung by Juliane Banse; her accompanist won't be, in this case, Wolfram Rieger but Aleksandar Madžar.