Tre sonetti di Petrarca by Franz Liszt were published in 1846, first the solo piano version and a few months later, the songs, which are believed to be composed first. Liszt might have composed them a few years before, during his relationship with Countess Marie d'Agoult, the kind of stories that used to be a scandal at the time. In 1835, the countess, thirty-two years old, married and with two children, left her husband for the pianist, eight years younger than her. They left Paris and, between 1835 and 1839, they lived in Switzerland and Italy, where their three children were born; Liszt spent the following five years [...]

After composing Le travail du peintre, Francis Poulenc said that time for mélodie was over, at least for him. That was in 1956 and in the following four years, he only wrote a couple of songs. He didn’t sit idly though; Dialogues des carmelites was premiered in 1957, La voix humaine in 1958 and Gloria in 1960. That same year he wrote his very last song cycle, La courte paille, adding a new poet to his repertoire, Maurice Carême. Instead of the complexity of Paul Éluard or Apollinaire's poetry, he chose then poems within everyone's grasp.

This week, we also commemorate an anniversary after having recalled Berlioz last week. In fact, the 150th anniversary of the death of another composer, Carl Loewe, also known as "the king of the ballad". He was one of our first composers here on Liederabend, we listened to one of his songs in August 2012. Back then I told a few notes about him; he was born in Löbejün (north of Germany) a few weeks before Schubert was born in Vienna, both in similar family circumstances. Both enjoyed an excellent musical training thanks to their achievements as choir boys, but the parallelism between their lives ends here.[...]

The 2019 marks 150 years since the death of Hector Berlioz, he's one of the composers we celebrate this year. Let us face facts: songs are not the best known of Berlioz's work; The most performed are those included in Les nuits d'étè, and I thought that this cycle would be often programmed during this season, but I was wrong. In any case, we are interested in Berlioz's songs, and I suggest that we listen to a really beautiful one, which gives us the opportunity to meet Ophelia again.

Today, the wunderschönen Monat Mai begins; It's a good day to listen to Dichterliebe, at least from those first notes that are a balm for the soul until the seventh song, which is ours today. To talk in order about the songs in this cycle allows us to follow what happens to the poet. He talked to us about a love that begins in May, about tears that are offerings, about his beloved, more beautiful than the sun, about a kiss that cures all ills or about the memories of that kiss. He sent us some contradictory messages (he cries bitterly when she says "I love you"), but the last song we listened, Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome, doesn't [...]