Songs and ballads
The 15th Song Festival attracts visitors with five composer portraits in the Fürstenhaus
After an intensive Lied week in February, the next ‘Liedtage’ at the Weimar Music University will now feature a series of composer portraits. From 19 June to 9 July, songs, ballads and chamber music by Petr Eben, Walther von Goethe, Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss and Gabriel Fauré will be performed on a total of four evenings. As usual, ‘Liedtage XV’ is under the overall artistic direction of Lied design professor Karl-Peter Kammerlander.
The festival begins on Wednesday, 19 June at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus with songs and piano music by Petr Eben. The deeply humanistic and religious Czech composer Petr Eben is an important name, especially for organ and choral literature.
Piano variations on the Easter hymn ‘Veni creator spiritus’, which will be performed in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus, fit into this picture. Students from the song classes will also perform early, biographically motivated song cycles such as ‘Heimliche Lieder’, ‘Minnelieder’ and ‘Stille Lieder’.
The Lied Days continue on Tuesday, 25 June at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus. The programme includes the fascinating songs and ballads of Walther von Goethe, the little-known contemporary of Schumann and Liszt.
The concert takes place as part of an interdisciplinary Erasmus workshop in cooperation with universities in Graz and Frankfurt am Main, among others. ‘Discover the multifaceted work of a multifaceted, sensitive personality,’ explains Prof Karl-Peter Kammerlander, Artistic Director of the Lied Festival.
In a double portrait on Tuesday, 2 July at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus, the Lied oeuvre of the composers Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss can be explored. Neither of them aspired to go down in music history as ‘neo-tonalists’. ‘The evening is also an exciting attempt at a sometimes confrontational juxtaposition,’ says Prof Kammerlander.
At the end of the Liedtage, the focus will shift to the West: Gabriel Fauré's importance for the history of French music can hardly be overestimated. The songs of this subtle music writer and important composer will be performed on Tuesday, 9 July at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus.
The concert will trace the development of his musical language from the Salonesque romance through the ‘wagnerisme’ typical of French music at the time to a harmonically diverse, poetic style of expression.
Admission to all concerts is free.
[27 May 2024]