When we search among the Catalan modernist composers, we find great names such as Isaac Albéniz, Josep Anselm Clavé i Camps, Enric Granados, Enric Morera, Felip Pedrell, Eduard Toldrà, Joaquim Serra... without finding a mention to many women composers who were part of that time. This fact has been repeated throughout history, however nowadays we are living an era that is waking up the voices of women that have had an important role and therefore I have decided to contribute [...]
"Nun hast du Mir den resten Schmerz getan" (Now you have caused me the first pain) is the song that ends Schumann's cycle "Frauenliebe und Liebe" (Woman's love and life) Op.42. In it a woman recounts in the first person the moments of a time-slice in her life (from the time she ceases to feel like a child when she discovers love, to the time when she becomes a mother and, finally, is widowed). Because of this, it has been immersed in controversies surrounding the concepts of sexism [...]
I wanted to write about this song because I think it is a song meant to be a song and that makes me take a point of authenticity that is not always easy to find in the repertoire. The spontaneity and freshness that Shakespeare knew how to find with Feste, I think Beach has been able to find it in the same way with her music. Also, when I have to play it in public, I empathize a lot with the character because in a way I am also doing the same job as the fool.
Although most of the Art Song pieces are songs written from poems, there are exceptions in the repertoire, such as songs that became emancipated from a theatre piece. The best-known case is the Romanze aus "Rosamunde", which was originally part of Schubert's incidental music for the play Rosamunde, Prinzessin von Zypern by Helmina von Chélzy.
The father of Mieczysław Weinberg arrived in Warsaw fleeing from the pogrom of Kishinev (then in the Russian Empire) in 1905, where his father and grandfather had died. More than thirty years later, Mieczysław was the only survivor of his family; He was able to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto, while his parents and his sister were killed in the Trawniki concentration camp in 1943. He settled in the USSR, where his father-in-law was murdered in 1948 by Stalin's secret police, and he was [...]