Mária Horváth (voice), Adrienne Hauser (piano)

The Wanderer’s Nightsong provides the frame for the concert: two different poems by Goethe with the same title, will be heard at the beginning (Der du von dem Himmel bist) and the end (Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh). The poems, that have been set to music by many composers, inspired Liszt too, who actually followed in the footsteps of Goethe in Weimar. Goethe is also present not only in Mignon’s song evoking the world of Wilhelm Meister, but also in the piano arrangement of the Schubert song (Gretchen am Spinnrade). There is another Schubert song in the programme, Liszt’s piano version of Die Stadt from the Schwanengesang series, and among the contemporary and past artists who influenced Liszt Petrarch is represented, as well as Heine (Die Loreley) who more than once made unkind remarks about Liszt, and Byron, from whom Liszt took the motto of Les Cloches de Genève in the Swiss series of the Années de Pélerinage. Also on the programme are two songs of less literary value: Jugendglück, composed in 1860, and Es muss ein Wunderbares sein that Liszt jotted down between two meals in 1852, and one of the pearls of Liszt’s late piano music, the fourth Valse oubliée with its mood of resignation.

Programme:

Songs and piano pieces
Der du von dem Himmel bist
Petrarca sonett
Die Loreley
The fourth forgotten waltz
The  bells of Geneva
Schubert-Liszt: Die Stadt
Gretchen am Spinnrade
Jugendglück
Es muß ein Wunderbares sein
Mignons Lied
Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh