Burgen

As regards the quick and complex evolution of Lieder within the timeframe of a few decades, the relationship between poetic text (lyrics) and musical composition undergoes some variations which are worth underscoring. The term Lied indicates primarily a literary genre, a strophic composition (leit means precisely “stanza” in German), whose translation as “song” should not be intended literally; it is similar to our speaking of “canto” in Homer or Dante, i.e. to indicate poetic texts which “only putatively could be accompanied by music” (G. Bevilacqua).

Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout combine here to perform two of Schumann’s major cycles to words by Heine. They also throw in a selection of five Heine settings by the largely forgotten Franz Lachner (1803-90) from his Sängerfahrt (Singer’s Journey), which include the same text – ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ – with which Schumann’s Dichterliebe begins.