Concert programme — Brahms, Wolf, Tchaikovsky & Rachmaninov

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Die Mainacht Op.43 No.2 (1866)

An die Nachtigall Op.46 No.4 (1868)

Minnelied Op.71 No.5 (1877)

An ein Veilchen Op.49 No.2 (1868)

8 Lieder und Gesänge von G.F.Daumer Op.57 (1867–71)

Von waldbekränzter Höhe

Wenn du mir zuweilen lächelst

Es träumte mir

Ach, wende diesen Blick

In meiner Nächte Sehnen

Strahlt zuweilen auch ein mildes Licht

Die Schnur, die Perl’ an Perle

Unbewegte laue Luft

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)

4 Goethe Lieder (1888–89)

Ganymed

Gleich und gleich

Der neue Amadis

Anakreons Grab

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Not a word, O my friend Op.6 No.2 (1869)

Does the day reign Op.47 No.6 (1880)

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943)

Believe me not, friend Op.14 No.7 (1894)

They answered Op.21 No.4 (1900)

Spring waters Op.14 No.11 (1894)

Brahms had such a high opinion of Ludwig Hölty’s “beautiful, warm words” that he felt his music was “not strong enough” to do them justice. “Otherwise,” he remarked, “you’d see me setting more of them” – though probably not as many as Schubert, who wrote as many as 23 Hölty songs in his late teens. As a comparison of their respective settings of Die Mainacht demonstrates, Brahms was being unduly modest: his interpretation, with its harmonically distraught middle section, is actually more truthful than Schubert’s unmodified strophic setting. There is a similar expresive distinction between the Schubert and Brahms settings of another Hölty nightingale poem, An die Nachtigall, where the latter reflects the pain of the bird’s song in strongly emphasised dissonances. Had Schubert turned to Hölty’s Minnelied he might well have alluded to the popular dance idiom as Brahms does in his bucolic setting. With An ein Veilchen, however, he might have avoided the perilously drastic changes in mood and metre risked by Brahms in the second half of the song.

The eight Daumer settings of Op.57 are the only group of solo songs Brahms ever devoted to one poet. They are also unusual among his Lieder in that they seem to be put together as an informal cycle. They cover a range of emotional states, from the pain of unrequited love to an exalted anticipation of some kind of union. If there is a thematic link between the songs, it appears first at an extraordinary moment in the interlude before the second stanzas ofVon waldbekränzter Höhe. Everything changes here: the piano figuration, the harmonies and, above all, the melodic line, which now seems to echo one of the themes which Brahms’s late colleague Robert Schumann addressed to his beloved Clara. Perhaps this was Brahms’s discreet way of dedicating the songs, and their expression of frustrated passion, to that same Clara.

Wenn du mir zuweilen lächelst also begins conventionally but within a few lines develops into a cry of pain. Es träumte mir is less inclined to face the facts and hovers poetically between illusion and reality, major and minor harmonies, finally settling for the dreamy illusion. There is no illusion in Ach, wende diesen Blick, the first and third stanzas of which are firmly set in the minor and are all the more poignant for the brief glimpse of peace in the middle. The emotional turning point occurs in In meiner Nächte Sehnen, which is carried on its urgent keyboard figuration to a climax of passion in the third stanza. Significantly, the exaltation of the “divine woman” in the last line plainly recalls the Clara theme and brings the song to a gentle ending in the major. Strahlt zuweilen auch in mildes Licht retains the same major tonality to start with and recovers it lyrically enough by the end. The situation is so changed by now that, in Die Schnur, die Perl’ an Perle there is room for an exquisite erotic fantasy. Passion, it seems, is stilled in the nocturnal opening of Unbewegte laue Luft, where the only movement is the splashing of the fountain. But then, with a sudden change of tempo, desire surges up again and seems to achieve a final consummation.

As a composer who set 53 poems by Mörike and 51 by Goethe, Wolf clearly did not share Brahms’s belief that the greatest poetry is “so finished that there is nothing one can do to them with music.” Indeed, with Ganymed he felt not only that he could add something to Goethe but also that he could do it better than Schubert. If Wolf’s interpretation lacks the overt passion of Schubert’s, it is uniquely inspired in the intense sensuality of its harmonies and masterly in its matching of poetic expression and musical structure. Apparently less of a challenge, the eight short lines of Gleich und gleich would be crushed by any setting without the extreme lightness of touch of Wolf the miniaturist. Der neue Amadis is a delightfully witty study in boyish characterisation and Anakreons Grab a contrastingly enchanting combination of idyll and elegy.

Given his incomparable gift for melody, his harmonic sensitivity and his instinctive understanding of the voice, Tchaikovsky should be one of the greatest of all song composers. If, in the hundred or so songs he wrote between 1869 and 1893, he rarely achieved that kind of mastery the reason might be found in the piano parts – not, in most cases, because they are casually written but, on the contrary, because they tend to be overelaborate in their context. He found a true balance, however, in Not a Word, O my Friend, from his first set of songs, where the dramatic potenital of the piano is held in reserve for the heightened emotion of the middle section. If the piano part of Does the day reign is at all overwrought it is in the extended postlude: in the song itself the surging accompaniment and the ecstatic vocal line are in finely calculcated equilibirum.

Rachmaninov too was inclined to give the piano no little prominence in his songs. In comparison with Tchaivkosky’s pianistically modest setting of the same words, his Do not believe, my friend is a display of keyboard bravura. Happily, it restricts its most extravagant piano scoring to the massively passionate postlude. With They answered he resisted the temptation to compete with Liszt in his setting of the same Hugo poem (Comment, disaient-ils) and achieved one of his most effectively balanced as well as most judiciously proportioned settings. Spring Waters is another piano bravura piece but one where the voice matches it in its exultant expression to create a song which, probably more than any other, demonstrates what was lost to the world when the composer exiled himself not only from Russia but also the inspiration he found in its poetry.

Gerald Larner © 2009