Visions of Childhood

Mahler, Gustav;
Wagner, Richard;
Humperdinck, Engelbert;
Schubert, Franz;
Strauss, Richard

English Symphony Orchestra;
Woods, Kenneth

NI 6408

Visions of Childhood presents music by Mahler, Wagner, Humperdinck & Schubert in chamber arrangements by Erwin Stein, James Ledger and Kenneth Woods Given that this programme was to be an exploration of childhood, the obvious place to start is with birth. Richard Wagner wrote his Siegfried Idyll as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima, just after the birth of their son, Siegfried. Nowhere else in music is there so tender an evocation of those fragile, precious and fraught first days and weeks of life.

Engelbert Humperdinck’s great children’s opera, Hänsel und Gretel, a quasi-Wagnerian setting of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, tells the story of two children in peril. The opera was composed in 1892 and the two selections Ken Woods adapted come from Act II, Scene 2. “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”) is one of Schubert’s simplest and most popular songs, composed in 1817, when Schubert was just 20, to words by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart.

Finally, we come to another combination of song and variations by Schubert, both known as “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”). The song is based on a poem by Matthias Claudius and was written in 1817, the same year as “The Trout.” It has only two verses –one in which the Maiden pleads with Death to pass her by, and one in which Death assures her that he is a friend.

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Nimbus

09-02-2021

0710357640827