Hans Sommer News
German composer (1837–1922)
- opera
- Germany
- mathematician, composer, university teacher
Last update
2024-04-23
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2024-04-20 08:34:00
A day at Leeds Lieder Festival: Fauré, Boulanger, Mahler and more
[…] is Fauré in excelsis with hints of Debussy, yet a developing voice that was Boulanger's own. The heady atmosphere began with Elle était descendue followed by the concentrated intent of Si tout ceci with its Wagnerian references in the piano. Nous nous aimerons was all luminous harmony and the group ended with the luscious, seductive textures of Vous m’avez regardé.The second half began with a group of songs by Mahler, in lighter mood than usual, all taken from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Gilchrist made Ablösung im Sommer a delightful mini-drama, full of narrative charm. This story-telling continued with Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt which became a litany of delightful descriptions of different fish, with Gilchrist gleefully combining musical and visual story-telling. Rheinlegendchen was another charming story, with a lovely sway to the accompaniment, and we ended this group with Lob des hohen Verstandes where Gilchrist had great fun narrating and enacting the story.We then returned to 20th century England with Muriel Herbert, a composer who trained with […]
2023-07-13 09:43:52
2022-04-14 14:14:00
Richard Wagner and the Nationalisation of Feeling, exhibition at Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
[…] more common recently. We have scenes from Barrie Kosky’s (to my mind) misguided production of Die Meistersinger presented quite uncritically, along with an intriguing sound-installation of Kosky’s, ‘Schwarzalbenreich’, in which he makes the case you would expect, yet far more interestingly—and with evident commitment—than the rest of this section. The ‘Epilogue’ again has some excellent exhibits: a Lohengrin chocolate bar, a 1933 Bayreuth playbill for Die Meistersingerand an August 1939 poster for a Berliner Sommer-Festspiele Rienzi. It also, incredibly, claims that when Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow ‘coined the term Nibelungentreue (Nibelung loyalty) in 1909, he was using something that went back all the way to the Ring. Apparently, Bülow and the person who wrote this were both unaware of a certain mediaeval epic. Wagner, you see, was responsible for the First as well as the Second World War. A 1952 edition of Adorno’s Versuch über Wagner is, bafflingly for […]
2021-10-20 08:37:41
Birdsong on the River: Ailish Tynan, Ian Wilson and James Gilchrist at the Oxford Lieder Festival
[…] setting but one by Hugo Wolf which brings out more the sense of rapture and sexual anticipation in the text with Tynan delivering it with a sense of wonder allied to slow sensuality. Birdsong in music would not be complete without Olivier Messiaen and Ian Wilson was accompanied by Libby Burgess in Messiaen's haunting Vocalise from 1935, in fact commissioned for a vocal tutor which included vocalises by Ravel and Rachmaninov! Mahler's early Ablösung im Sommer from Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit gave us an engaging story complete with hints of more popular music in the piano. Then Judith Weir's intriguing Fish Bird, setting an English version of a text from Taoist philosophy, a deceptively simple piece which had you both entrance and wanting to learn more. This group ended with a final recorder piece, Music for a bird by Hans-Martin Linde (born 1930) from 1968, which uses all […]
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