About two years ago, I wrote a post about how programs including poems and their translations, which used to be so familiar at song recitals in Barcelona, were vanishing from concert halls. I asked if you also needed the poems, as I do, to fully enjoy the concerts and your answers were unanimous: all of you, audience members, singers and pianists, said that texts are essential, even if the songs are sung in our mother tongue. You also explained your reasons and suggested some alternatives to printed texts. Of course, the sample was small so my poll didn't have a high statistical value but it was very enlightening for me. Today, I'm talking from another side: singers who don't want the audience to have the texts.
Many French poems talk about animals. I don't know why; it might be due to medieval bestiaries or those fables by Jean de la Fontaine but the point is that we find lots of beasts in French poetry and you already know how poems become songs... I'm not saying that German poetry, for instance, doesn't refer to animals but, according to the Lieder, those are mostly birds, while in French poetry, we read about the most unusual creatures. We mentioned some of them when we talked about Chabrier's songs with the Ronsards' poems or Ravel and Renard's songs. Today our guests are Poulenc and Apollinaire.Song of the week: By a Bierside (I. Gurney) - S. Connolly, M. Martineau
When I got the program of Sarah Connolly and Malcolm Martineau's recital at the Schubertiade Vilabertran, my eyes just saw one name: Ivor Gurney. Neither Schubert nor Schumann not even Britten. Gurney. I was really excited because I was about to be the first time that I heard his songs in a recital, as I only did in recordings before. I explained to everybody who wanted to hear that there were Gurney's songs at the SV15 and I shared one of them with you. Connolly and Martineau's recital was excellent and according to the audience comments, the winner of that night was ... Gurney! I told you, it was worth listening to his songs...
The song of our previous post, Heiß mich nicht reden, closes the book V of Goethe's novel. Mignon sings it after saying goodbye to Wilhelm, who goes on a trip to fulfill Aurelie’s last will: to deliver to Lothario (her old sweetheart) a letter she wrote him shortly before her death. However, the novel doesn't resume its main plot, instead, the reader finds a text that the narrator has already anticipated. You might remember a doctor who visits Aurelie shortly before her death; he finds her so upset that he sends her a manuscript written by a friend recently deceased, hoping that reading would calm her down. Aurelie reads it and, in fact, she feels better and spends her last days in peace.
