Last year we closed the "Benjamin Britten Year" with two pieces of his A Ceremony of Carols; this week we are closing the "Richard Strauss Year" with two of his lieder, both about Christmas.

Richard Strauss wrote his first two works at the tender age of six. The first one was a polka and the second one was Weihnachtslied (Christmas Song), a short song from the first verse of a poem by Christian Schubart. As you can imagine it's a very simple song, and probably, it's merely an anecdote in Strauss's work but it's also a cute song and it's worth listening to it, at least once. Here you are, performed by Michelle Breedt and Nina Schumann.

 

We left Wilhelm and his companions at the first chapter in the fourth book, leaving the Count's castle, who provided them the means to get to a nearby village. Once there, Melina organizes the journey to the city where they are settling; Wilhelm forgets about going back home and joins them.

When they are ready to go, some rumours arrive that there are bandits on their road; They have to choose between staying in town some more days, taking a much longer way or just ignoring those rumours and go ahead with their plans. Wilhelm thinks the last one is the best option and soon everybody agrees, especially Melina who thinks is the cheapest option. Nevertheless, they set out ready for an attack.

 

What do Franco Battiato and Elvis Presley have in common? Both did a cover of the same Art Song, a French romance, to be more precise. Other pop singers at some point in their career have also made an incursion into Art Song. This is what this post is about.

 

We are listening to some versions as sample, but as we have already listened to many of the original songs, I made "a posteriori" list with the related posts. This way you can go over them if you feel like it; I added a comment in every post with a link to the pop version in Youtube. Whenever we talk about other covers, I'll add them to the list; Also, if you happen to know another posted Lied that went Pop, please let me know and [...]

 

M. Glinka (lyrics by N.Kukolnik) “Proshaniye s Peterburgom” (“Farewell to Petersburg”), 1840 is a vocal cycle of 12 songs or ”romances” including the most popular themes of romanticism: love and jealousy, beauty of nature, sad remembrances, Oriental exotics and glorifying friendship. The beauty of Russian landscape is reflected in Zhavoronok (The Lark), and passion and jealousy of the lover in Bolero. My Fair Maiden. Mikhail Glinka (1804-1957), the great Russian composer was known for his “romances” (Russian equivalent of Lieder), and Nestor Kukolnik (1809-1869) was one of the most popular poets of the time.

 

In 1896, Jules Renard published Histoires naturelles (Nature stories), a book of stories whose main characters were animals: hens, turkeys, ducks, cocks, peacocks, pigeons, swans, dogs, cats, cows ... a long list. The book (and the animals’ list) was expanded in later editions until 1909; Renard died the following year. The first story is called Le chasseur d'images (Hunting for Pictures) and explains how someone leaves his house in the morning ready to observe everything he comes across along the day: “les yeux servent de filets où les images s'emprisonnent d'elles-mêmes” (the eyes act as nets where images are trapped). When he returns home, before bedtime, he examines those images. Then, we begin to read descriptions of the images, each one a story; most are short and others, hardly a line.