Joseph O'neill

Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse’s collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse’s translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf’s settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart.

The 37 songs in this recital, written by 27 composers – male, female, English, French, Swiss, German, Romantic, modern and contemporary – bear witness to the richness of Shakespeare’s works to which this recital is dedicated.

Blending the literate and expressive lyrical style of a classic singer/songwriter with music rooted in indie rock, Joseph Arthur is a well-respected songwriter and performer whose work has impressed critics as well as artists such as Peter Gabriel and Michael Stipe. Arthur's original goal was to become a hotshot bass player, but exposure to Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain prompted him to take up songwriting, and in 1996, he self-released an EP that made its way to Peter Gabriel, who signed Arthur to his Real World label. 1997's challenging Big City Secrets and 2000's rootsy Come to Where I'm From impressed critics and discriminating listeners, and 2004's Our Shadows Will Remain found him digging even deeper into his confessional tales. With 2007's Let's Just Be, Arthur launched his own record label, Lonely Astronaut, giving him greater control over his music as he recorded idiosyncratic projects such as 2013's The Ballad of Boogie Christ and 2014's Lou (the latter a collection of Lou Reed covers).