Camilla Tilling and Emanuel Ax | October 31, 2023 | House Program

PROGRAM NOTES
The thread running through this concert is
the 19th-century singer, Jenny Lind (1820-
1887), affectionately known as the “Swedish
Nightingale.” Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling has
felt a connection to Jenny Lind since receiving
a scholarship named in Lind’s honour when
she was 24. In 2020, Tilling curated tonight’s
program to celebrate the 200th anniversary of
Lind’s birth, by focussing specifically on Lind’s
passion for German Lieder. As Tilling writes, “…
the composers on this program not only featured
on Jenny’s famed US tour that was promoted
by the showman, P.T. Barnum, but were also
linked to Jenny through musical collaboration
and friendship. Indeed, the Schumanns were
such dear friends–Jenny regularly performed
works by Robert—and she would on occasion
join Clara Schumann (a most celebrated concert
pianist and tourer at this time) on stage to bolster
audience numbers at Clara’s concerts. Through
the Schumanns, Jenny was introduced to both
Chopin–it is rumoured she even gifted him a
large sum to help him in his final years—and
Mendelssohn with whom Jenny had a supposedly
turbulent romantic entanglement.”
Mendelssohn’s Opus 8, No. 8, “Witches’ Song,”
uses fiery piano octaves and a demonic energy to
convey Beelzebub and his witches and certainly
seems highly appropriate for this concert taking
place on Halloween. The next three Opus 86
Lieder are taken from a six-song collection that
was assembled posthumously, noting that all of
the songs in this collection have a more singular
focus on love poetry than the variety of songs
that the composer himself usually assembled
for publication: “The Beloved Writes” (No. 3), is
a desperate love letter to someone who has yet
to return their advances; “Nightly in My Dreams”
(No. 4), describes an unsatisfied relationship
where the love’s vision is only present in dreams;
and “The Moon” (No. 6), personifies the love
interest as the moon, with pleas to have it
lighten the night. Of the concluding set of
four Mendelssohn songs, the last one, “On
Wings of Song,” is one of the composer’s
most recognizable melodies. It might also
be familiar to listeners from the 1954 version
that Doris Day recorded under the title,
“Til My Love Comes to Me.”
French mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, born a
year later than Jenny Lind, also had an illustrious
career. She counted amongst her friends, Chopin,
who in addition to advising her on piano playing
and composing, gave her approval to rework
some of his solo piano mazurkas into songs. The
piano part in these arrangements generally stays
true to Chopin’s originals but, as you will hear in
Opus 33, No. 2, Viardot’s flirtatious text and vocal
delivery, take this Polish dance to another level.
Schumann’s Opus 98A adds music to a total
of nine songs sung by different characters in
Goethe’s eight-part novel, Wilhelm Meister,
noting that Opus 98B also uses the same source
material in a cantata-type work titled, Requiem
for Mignon. The two Opus 79 songs are exquisite
miniatures from his “Song Album for the Young.”
with No. 23 (“Spring is Here”) employing a
piano part that generates spaces for the singer’s
beautiful high notes to shine through, and
No. 13 (Ladybug), sets to music the German
equivalent of “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away
home….” In 1840, Robert Schumann composed
over 130 songs, a truly prolific year. The focus
on so much romantic poetry that year can be
traced to the legal battle that he and Clara had
won over her father’s refusal to allow them to
marry. The final four songs on this program
are from this “year-of-song” with the period’s
happiness heard most prominently in Op. 39,
No. 12 (Spring Night), which builds repeated
chordal patterns to a powerful ending as the
poem highlights the many aspects of spring
that are crying out, “She is yours!”
All of the composers on tonight’s program were
highly skilled pianists and their understanding of
the keyboard is often used to generate textures
between the two hands that can be remarkably
intricate and complex. The opportunity to hear
some of the solo piano music performed in the
context of a vocal recital, helps to emphasize
the songlike quality of their instrumental
melodic writing, as can be heard in the very
operatic melodic focus of Chopin’s Nocturnes
and the lyrical flowering of the coda that ends
Schumann’s Arabeske.
©2023 by John Burge for the Isabel