According to weathermen, when this article sees the light of day, Autumn will have arrived at Barcelona. Or rather, Autumn will finally have arrived at Barcelona. So long sandals, strap T-shirts and shorts! Welcome jackets, neck scarves and quilt on our beds. Just thinking about it makes me happy and puts me in the mood for Autumn, so I chose a song to celebrate it. Do you remember that a long, long time ago, we listened to a song called The Singer? With that beautiful image of melodies becoming coloured bubbles? That was almost four and a half years ago and since then, Peter Warlock hasn’t come back to Liederabend; The more I listen to him, the more I like him, and today we're listening to one of his songs, inspired by the Autumn.

 

This week's post is dedicated to two kind readers, Bernat and Jordi, and their requests. Bernat asked me a Liederabend's account on Spotify; I'm glad to say it's ready. In fact, as I told him, I created the account some time ago and I shared our sad, happy and buggy's songs. However, I didn't add anything else and the account remained forgotten. Among my new season's resolutions, there is the 2016-2017 list, that will grow every week; So far, I completed the 2015-2016 list and I will be adding my previous seasons. When possible, I added the same versions that I posted; on a few occasions, I wasn't able to find the song...

 

I resume the Liederabend's alphabet with a new season's resolution: writing about a new letter every month. E is for "Espectadors" in Catalan, that's to say, for "members of the audience". This post should have been just navel-gazing but some weeks ago an incident at a song recital altered the expected calmness; I'll talk about it later.

Art song lovers tend to consider ourselves an exquisite, polite, silent audience... the perfect one! But... are we so perfect? It's true that we are silent, we need a high level of concentration; we could miss a whole song if we get distracted for a couple of minutes. In addition, our hands are busy with the program, so we can't send messages on our smartphones at the same time. It is also true that we usually are well informed; we know what [...]

 

Tradition says (and it's a tradition that fills with light the end of summer) that every year around this date the voice of Fritz Wunderlich sounds on Liederabend. As I said in the first year, 2012, I am in the habit of recalling that great tenor on the anniversary of his death and I like to share it with you. It's a way of paying homage to him, thanking him for his music and enjoying an unforgettable voice for some minutes. And, who knows, maybe someone will discover him and fall in love with him...

 

Do you remember when we used to send postcards from our holiday destinations? No matter where we were, either in a faraway and exotic place or just in a village 40 km away from home. We chose a few images of the location and sat in a nice spot to drop a line to our friends. Well, whenever you read this post I will be on holiday and won't have any technical means to write and send you this musical postcard, so I’ll leave it ready and scheduled to be posted on Wednesday, and I'll trust the good working of bits as we used to trust our postmen...

I’ve chosen a beautiful musical clue of the place I’m going to. It doesn't exactly refer to the city but my intention is reaching this sea, so different from our Mediterranean. By the grace of Johannes Brahms and Karl von Lemcke on the one hand and Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau on the other, we can see on the postcard, called Verzagen (Despondency), a man sitting and gazing across the sea. A sea as hectic as disturbed his soul is. I hope that the landscape will bring him the peace he needs. And that's all...

Next week I'll be back home, and we'll commemorate together the great Fritz Wunderlich, as we do every year. Greetings from ...!