A selection of songs that look at the trials and tribulations of love, separated by geography and fate.

Robert Schumann’s best‑known and best‑loved song‑cycle tells the story of a poet’s relationship with an unnamed woman. The programme interlaces Schumann’s songs for male voice with a female perspective on the same narrative, adding selections by Grieg, Wolf, Mahler, Tosti and Clara Schumann.

The two singers alternate, creating an ever‑shifting colour world that reflects the exchange between two equal partners. Throughout, she continues to love him as he loves her, yet they cannot express their feelings, cannot make the relationship work, and she eventually leaves him for someone she loves even less.

At times the soprano becomes the “real” other person in the relationship; at other moments she mirrors his emotions and expands them from a female viewpoint. Unlike the single, linear story of Schubert’s Winterreise, this performance follows a clear emotional thread that portrays a relationship that, for whatever reason, cannot succeed.

Programme

Robert Schumann Dichterliebe and Mit Myrten und Rosen
Clara Schumann Die liebten sich beide
Songs by Mahler, Grieg, Wolf and Tosti