Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Robert Schumann

"Dichterliebe". Song cycle for Bariton and Piano Op. 48

 

Late in the spring of 1840, immediately after having completed his Liederkreis (Song Cycle), Op. 39, Schumann began to work on a new group of settings of poems by Heinrich Heine, which he published in 1844 under the title Dichterliebe (Poet’s Love). Oddly enough, Schumann’s title did not originate with Heine but rather with a line from a poem by Friedrich Rückert: “Poets’ loves have always been opposed in wholly special ways.” Indeed, one could say that the sixteen poems in Dichterliebe are tied together by a single thread – unrequited love – which Heine was able to express with an apparent equanimity often laced with bitter sarcasm. From a purely structural point of view, Dichterliebe is to be considered the most flawless of Schumann’s song cycles. The relationship of each piece to the whole is much closer than in any of the other groups published by Schumann, and his use of the piano postlude is extraordinary here. As Mario Bortolotto has written, these endings “are rarely simple repetitions of the phrase that has just been heard. More often, they distort it, direct it toward a different harmonic resolution, alter its rhythm and give it meanings that are sometimes obscure or disturbing, sometimes mocking or grotesque.”

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1. Im windershönen Monat Mai
2. Aus meinen Tränen spriessen
3. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
5. Ich will meine Seele tauchen
7. Ich grolle nicht
9. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen
10. Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen
12. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen

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