It's Christmas week and, as usual on Liederabend, we start a series of three posts (short posts because we all are busy enough these days) with three songs about Christmas.

After giving several concerts in 1848 and 1849, Johannes Brahms left his career as a solo pianist to focus on composition; in the following years he devoted himself to it intensively and in 1853 began publishing some of his works. The first two were two sonatas, and the third, a collection of six Lieder, the first of which was very successful. A success that has survived until now [...]

Korngold has often been programmed for song recitals this season, at least much more than usual, and I'm happy with that. But I didn't realize the reason until recently: Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in 1897 (and died in 1957), so this year marks 125 years of his birth (and 65 of his death). Don't you think we could listen to one more of his song this week on the pretext of ephemerides?

I was introduced to Ned Rorem's music thanks to another music lover, an expert in contemporary repertoire. His first cycles I heard were More than a day (1995), for countertenor and chamber orchestra, and Evidences of things not seen, premiered in 1998 to celebrate the composer's 75th birthday, which I [...]

The opera Guillaume Tell by Gioachino Rossini, premiered in 1829, is the most famous musical version of Wilhelm Tell, the drama published by Friedrich von Schiller in 1804. Although the opera is hardly performed, the piece that opens it has become independent and is one of the most popular in the classical repertoire; everybody recognizes that brilliant music even if they cannot identify it.