Wilhelm Killmayer was born in 1927 in Munich, and died in a nearby village, Stanberg, the day before his 90th birthday. He was born late enough to not have to fight in the war (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, for example, born just two years earlier, was not so lucky), but, of course, that disaster affected his life (he was the only one among his classmates who did not join any youth organization [...]

My dearest, once more, a momento musical. As you might be aware, last weekend we celebrated the Schubertíada Cantabria, and I deliberately use this verb because it was a true musical celebration. One of the images I keep for memory is that of the smiles of the public.

A few days ago, when I was finishing last week's article on Red Roses and Red Noses, I read a detail about the song that I had missed until then. On the booklet of "My Garden" (the CD from which I extracted the interpretation I shared), Richard Stokes said that Lord Berners' song was clearly a parody of Thomas Moore's song The Last Rose of Summer. I thought first I'd make [...]

[...] Nancy Mitford knew the world she wrote about well. She was the daughter of Baron Redesdale, and in her novel Pursuit of Love there is no shortage of autobiographical traits or characters inspired by real people. For instance, Lord Merlin closely resembles a good friend of the writer, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson (1883–1950), better known as Lord Berners after he [...]

After listening to Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide's great performance of Die schöne Magelone, I thought it had been a long time since I'd shared a song from this Brahms cycle here. When I checked, I discovered that it was in January 2016, more than seven years ago! It's been a while. So, it's time to listen to one more song from this work, officially called Romanzen aus Ludwig [...]