ABOUT
Songs are inherently miniature due to the musical forces involved, most commonly only involving a piano and lone voice. Yet despite being miniature on the surface, they often contain complex and vast emotional worlds within them and can be effective vehicles for dramatic storytelling. When combined, songs are able to form larger structures, with the ability to convey epic narratives that are musically as substantial as any full-length symphony or one-act opera. This festival continues to explores examples of this larger structure, the song cycle, and its narrative power.
PROGRAM I:
THE WANDERER
We start this festival with a program devoted to the wanderer. Wanderers and travelers populate the stories of this program’s song cycles, and as in any good story, our protagonists arrive at the end of their respective journeys changed people.
presented in partnership with The Poetry Foundation
ARTISTS
Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Tyler Duncan, baritone | Yvonne Lam, violin | Rose Armbrust Griffin, viola | Shannon McGinnis, piano | Erika Switzer, piano
PROGRAM
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Der Wanderer D. 649
MISSY MAZZOLI: Songs from the Operas (midwestern premiere | co-comission with Laguna Beach Music Festival)
GUSTAV MAHLER: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Songs of Travel
PROGRAM II:
THE FAIR MAGELONE
While he composed hundreds of Lieder, Brahms’ only foray into the genre of the song cycle is an unusual example of the form. Ludwig Tieck’s Love Story of the Beautiful Magelone and Count Peter of Provence, is a narrative that is told through prose sections that alternate with poems in 18 parts. Brahms excerpted 15 of the 18 poems included in Tieck’s novel, thus giving the songs a narrative chronology.
ARTISTS
Tyler Duncan, baritone | McKinley Carter, actor | Erika Switzer, piano
PROGRAM
JOHANNES BRAHMS: 15 Romanzen aus Ludwig Tiecks Magelone Op. 33
PROGRAM III:
LOVE’S PARADISE
Songs often provide composers with the opportunity to experiment, and in the case of Arnold Schönberg, his cycle of settings of poems by Stefan George, Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten, marked his final departure from tonality into serialism and atonality. Freed from the restrictive rules of tonality, Schönberg was able to express drama and text in a variety of ways and create a hauntingly and almost otherworldly atmosphere – perfect for the strange paradise in which this love story unfolds.
Janácek cycle 21 of poems from The Diary of One Who Disappeared is perhaps one of the most operatic and dramatic in the entire genre. The 21 songs along with one piano solo interlude tell, largely from the point of view of the peasant boy, of the couple’s strange and secretive courtship through the boy’s decision to run away, leaving his family and village behind to be with Zefka, his beautiful gypsy lover.
ARTISTS
Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano | Nicholas Phan, tenor | Shannon McGinnis, piano | Craig Terry, piano | Andrew Erickson, choreography & dancer | Kristen Hammer, dancer | Hana S. Kim, video design | CAIC Vocal Chamber Music Fellows
PROGRAM
ARNOLD SCHÖNBERG: Das Buch der hängenden Gärten Op. 15
LEOS JANÁCEK: The Diary of One Disappeared
For this performance, choreography was developed by Andrew Erickson for the Schönberg cycle, and video projections with projected translations were designed by Hana S. Kim for the Janácek cycle.