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 ...!
September has arrived, welcome back if you were on holiday in August! A new season is supposed to begin this week but, in spite of using my new brand notebook, I haven't quite finished the previous season or haven't been on holiday, and my poor brain is still getting used to the idea of a new brand course. So, please allow me to land gradually...
>We keep on talking about the Schubertiade Vilabertran. This week, it's turn for two song recitals by Matthias Goerne and Alexander Schmalcz, on 27th and 29th August. The programme of the first one is pretty intense: We will have the Vier Lieder, Op. 2 by Berg, Dichterliebe and three pieces that are the last ones (or almost) written by its composers: Three Poems of Michelangelo of Hugo Wolf, the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo by Dmitri Shostakovich and Brahms' Vier ernste Gesänge. So far, we’ve listened to five songs from that programme, here on Liederabend: