Virtuoso Weimar
Romantic song recital with readings around Ludwig Tieck's "Love Story of the Beautiful Magelone"
On the occasion of the 190th birthday of the composer Johannes Brahms, the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar invites you to the next event in the series "Virtuoses Weimar - Lehrende im Konzert". The pianist Ulrich Vogel, professor for opera correpetition in Weimar, will perform a song recital with readings on Sunday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus. Together with baritone Dominique Clement, Ulrich Vogel will interpret the song cycle "Die schöne Magelone" op. 33 by Johannes Brahms.
The concert with its 15 romances will be livened up by readings from the literary model for the song cycle: Ludwig Tieck's romantic tale "Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone und des Grafen Peter von Provence" from 1797. Anna Sophia Backhaus will act as narrator.
Tickets at 12 euros, reduced 8 euros, are available at the Tourist Information Weimar and at the box office.
"Paying tribute to the jubilarian Johannes Brahms on his 190th birthday with his only song cycle with a cohesive content does not happen by chance," explains Prof. Ulrich Vogel. "In the arrangement of these 15 songs, written between 1861 and 1868, Brahms the musician focuses in a particularly impressive way as a source of wonderful melodies, as a piano composer with the highest technical and tonal standards, and as a creator of artfully structured chamber music works." The symphonist is also already noticeable in the complexity of the piano movement and the thematic development of accompanying themes, Vogel said.
Brahms, as a collector and arranger of folk songs, is always also a song composer in all of his works: the lied-like characterizes his oeuvre from the Piano Sonata op. 1 to the Organ Chorale Preludes op.122. "Many of his melodies could be considered folk songs," Ulrich Vogel says, "and let's not forget that the theme of the final movement of his 1st Symphony was repeatedly even considered as a national anthem."
Large melodic arcs dominate the exceedingly demanding vocal part of Opus 33, with shorter songs alternating with those that have the scope of small cantatas. The piano is always an equal partner, acting sometimes filigree, sometimes full-throated concertante.
[26 April 2023]