3 Lieder

Stimme der Sehnsucht Op 19 No. 1 (1905)

Nachts Op. 26 No. 2 (1916)

Nachtwanderer Op. 7 No. 2 (1888–89)

Pfitzner liked to think of himself as “the last romantic.” Colleagues with more progressive aesthetics and less bigoted politics had other descriptions for him. But along with Richard Strauss, declared opponents though they were, he was one of the last exponents of the Lied in its traditional form. He was still setting his favourite romantic poet, Josef von Eichendorff, in the 1930s – although by then, in the last of his 19 sets of songs, his style had become much leaner than in such earlier Eichendorff settings as the two included in this group.

Even in the period before the first world war, however, and before the composer got to work on his magnum opus, Palestrina, a contemporary poet like Carl Busse could inspire a setting with no obvious precedent. Stimme der Sehnsucht is remarkable for its turbulent piano part and its dramatically articulated vocal line. Of the two Eichendorff Lieder, Nachts is perhaps the more impressive – for the reverential nocturnal atmosphere evoked by the low-tolling bells of the piano part and the hymnic ending which avoids religiosity least until the plagal cadence at the end. Nachtwanderer, from the years when Pfitzner first applied himself to song in a seriously systematic way, is an exciting nightride but but just too close for comfort to its Schubert (Erlkönig) model.