The concert featuring Mark Padmore, one of the most valued tenors of our time, will be an encounter with the 20th-century works of composers from his native country: Rebecca Clarke and Benjamin Britten. The artist will also reach for works from the Romantic period, performing a number of songs by one of the precursors of that era – Franz Schubert.
It is believed that Schubert was not only one of the precursors of Romanticism in general, but also the creator of the Romantic Lieder genre. Its symbolic beginning is considered to be the moment of writing in 1814 Gretchen am Spinnrade (Margaret at the Spinning Wheel) to the text from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s grouped in cycles. Schubert often drew inspiration from traditional Austrian folk songs, and in the creative process, he regularly reached for the works of the most important German poets, such as the Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Schiller, and Wilhelm Müller. In these songs, attention is drawn not only to the vocal melodic line, but also to the meticulously shaped piano part, which perfectly complements the mood of a given work. During the concert, selected songs will be performed, mostly dating from the last period of Schubert’s work, including the extremely cheerful Im Frühling and Der Winterabend, whose melody reflects the atmosphere of long winter evenings described by Carl Gottfried von Leitner.
“Rebecca Clarke is an exceptional woman who opened the door for later generations of women associated with music,” the American musicologist Nancy B. Reich once emphasised. Despite the enthusiastic reception of her works at the beginning of the twentieth century, the legacy of the distinguished violist and composer from Great Britain is now practically forgotten. Mark Padmore and Andrew West will perform four songs by Clarke, which are a perfect example of her experiments in finding her own language in the context of expanded tonality. The artists will crown the December evening with a performance of Winter Words op. 52, a cycle of eight songs to words by the English poet Thomas Hardy, written by Benjamin Britten, considered the best English composer of the twentieth century. Their main theme seems to be the thought of the loss of innocence when consciousness is formed, as well as motifs related to time and our transience. Britten depicts them on the score using exceptionally simple, yet effective sound techniques, introducing the listener to a nostalgic mood.
