CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Dorothea Röschmann
Malcolm Martineau

Zankel Hall
Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Dorothea Röschmann, Soprano
Malcolm Martineau, Piano

SCHUMANN Frauenliebe und -leben, Op. 42
·· Seit ich ihn gesehen
·· Er, der Herrlichste von allen
·· Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben
·· Du Ring an meinem Finger
·· Helft mir, ihr Schwestern
·· Süsser Freund, du blickest
·· An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust
·· Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan
SCHUMANN ROBERT SCHUMANN Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Op. 135 (trans. Gisbert Vincke)
·· Abschied von Frankreich
·· Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes
·· An die Königin Elisabeth
·· Abschied von der Welt
·· Gebet
MAHLER GUSTAV MAHLER Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
·· Rheinlegendchen
·· Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen
·· Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?
·· Lob des hohen Verstandes
·· Verlor’ne Müh
WOLF "Nimmersatte Liebe"
WOLF "An eine Äolsharfe"
WOLF "Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens"
WOLF "Denk es, o Seele!"
WOLF "Im Frühling"
WOLF "Gesang Weylas"
WOLF "Begegnung"

This concert and the Pure Voice series are sponsored by the Jean & Jula Goldwurm Memorial Foundation in memory of Jula Goldwurm.

Program Notes:

THE PROGRAM

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)

Frauenliebe und –leben, Op. 42

Some have heard Frauenliebe und -leben as patriarchal dictates to 19th-century women about how to worship their husbands, but French aristocrat and poet Adelbert von Chamisso was actually in sympathy with the emerging women’s movement. Though obedience to one’s husband of the sort we find here was an expected aspect of 19th-century marriage, Schumann saw in Chamisso’s words the portrait of a tender, strong, and loving woman.

In the first song, "Seit ich ihn gesehen," the young woman, not knowing that her love is reciprocated, experiences doubt and darkness; Schumann sets these words as a sarabande, a somewhat slow dance associated with erotic feeling. In the second song, "Er, der Herrlichste von allen," she sings ecstatically of his worth and her desire that he should be happy, even if that means his marriage to someone else. The miracle of his avowal of eternal love has happened just before the third song, "Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben," and the song is by turns breathless, passionate, tender, and sensual, ending with the clarity of belief. This is real love, no longer fantasy.

In "Du Ring an meinem Finger," the persona gazes at her wedding ring. We hear a newly mature woman aware of the responsibilities of marriage, but with quickened passion in the fourth verse before the initial sweetness returns. The joyous, bustling "Helft mir, ihr Schwestern" ends with music reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s famous wedding march in his incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Nineteenth-century modesty placed severe constraints on the announcement of pregnancy. When the husband finds his wife weeping, he asks why, ands that is where "Süsser Freund, du blickest" begins. In the rising piano interlude, we hear dawning realization on his part and heightened happiness on hers. In "An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust," the child has been born and suckles at her breast. At the end of the long piano postlude, we hear an echo of the "dein Bildnis" magic from the previous song and know that the child is indeed the longed-for incarnation of its father.

All such happiness must end in death, as we hear her mourn in "Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan." In a stroke of genius at the end, Schumann brings back the accompaniment (not the vocal part) to the entire first song; in memory, she returns to the beginning of her love for this man.


Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Op. 135

Another woman speaks to us in Schumann’s 1852 Christmas gift to his wife Clara: Mary, Queen of Scots. Schumann traces her life in her own words from the time the 19-year-old widow of the young French king François II left France for Scotland in August 1561; the first song, "Abschied von Frankreich," is a poignant lament.

Her life’s downward spiral began with marriage to the dissolute Henry, Lord Darnley in 1565; quickly falling out of love, Mary became attached to the Italian court musician David Rizzio, who was murdered by Darnley’s supporters in front of the pregnant Mary. In "Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes," the new mother prays for the child who would become king of Scotland the next year, when Mary was forced to abdicate the throne.

Mary subsequently fell in love with James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell; when Darnley was strangled in 1567, suspicion fell on Mary and Bothwell. Both were imprisoned; rather than fleeing to France, Mary chose to throw herself on the mercy of Queen Elizabeth I. "An die Königin Elisabeth" is an impassioned letter aria that ends, after heart-wrenching expenditure of emotion, with hollow, doom-laden cadences.

Elizabeth never agreed to meet with Mary, and the "Abschied von der Welt" probably dates from the 1580s, when it was clear that only death would release her. This is a regal last will and testament, enjoining her enemies to cease their spite and sweetly acknowledging those friends who love her. The queen’s final leap in the vocal line stretches upwards toward eternity. "Gebet" is her last prayer before her execution for treason on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle. The Bach-loving Schuman merges Bach-style chorale with the most sophisticated mid-century harmonies à la Wagner.


GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)
Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Mahler’s favorite source of poetic texts was Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn), an anthology of folk poems compiled by the Romantic poets Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Among the 20-plus Wunderhorn songs composed at different times between 1892 and 1901 is "Rheinlegendchen," the tale of a young woman who misses her sweetheart and concocts a charming fantasy in which his ring, thrown in the river, is eaten by a fish, makes its way to the king’s table, and inspires her beloved to come running back to her.

"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" is one of the most profound of Mahler’s "military nocturnes," born of childhood memories of band concerts in the Moravian garrison town of Iglau where he was born. Ghostly trumpet fanfares in the piano, spectral drum-rolls, dissonance-laden bugle calls fill this dialogue between a maiden and the ghost of her soldier-fiancé.

In "Lob des hohen Verstandes," the composer strikes back at his critics with pure irony. A donkey judges a song contest to predictable results: Bewildered by the nightingale’s artistry, the jackass is more impressed with the cuckoo’s simplicity. In "Verlor’ne Müh," a lass tries in vain to woo a churlish lad who rebuffs each of her advances. No one is on hand to say, "He’s just not that into you," and she is comically persistent in the face of rejection.


HUGO WOLF (1860–1903)
Songs from Gedichte von Eduard Mörike

On February 16, 1888 in the village of Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna, Wolf composed the first of the 53 Gedichte von Eduard Mörike. One of the 19th-century’s greatest poets, Mörike was hampered by hypochondria and neurosis, and consequently did not write much in his 71 years of life. His profundity and mastery of diverse forms, genres, and poetic types, however, irresistibly appealed to Wolf.

For a Lutheran pastor, Mörike could be astonishingly frank about eroticism. Wolf would later describe his setting of "Nimmersatte Liebe" as "a regular student’s song"—implying that students then as now are preoccupied with sex. Here, the composer in Freud’s Vienna creates a graphic simulation of panting and the motions of love-making.

"An eine Äolsharfe" is Mörike’s memorial to his favorite brother, August, who committed suicide in 1824. The poem begins with two acclamations, one to the Aeolian harp—a loosely-strung lyre played by the breezes—and another to the winds. Wolf treats the invocation to the Aeolian harp as a recitative drenched in his most poignant harmonies, topped with breezes that both waft down from on high and drift upwards.

In "Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens," a young woman describes her deflowering as it happens, from wondering whether what she grasps is a "sweet eel" or a "snake" (no decoding necessary) to penetration and increasing panic and fear. Wolf sets this daring poem as an agonistic waltz on speed, the piano and singer on different tracks most of the time. Somehow one is not surprised to find the Wagner-loving Wolf quoting the "Desire" motif from Tristan und Isolde.

The words of "Denk es, o Seele!" first appeared at the end of Mörike’s novella, Mozart on the Journey to Prague, where a character named Eugenie reads "an old Bohemian folk song" and understands it as a prophecy of Mozart’s early death. The poem’s speaker briefly achieves acceptance of death as part of the larger cycle by which life goes on, but at the end, acceptance is overthrown by terror. Wolf asks questions in the introduction ("How am I to respond to the tolling bell that signifies death?", the persona wonders), then sounds the horses’ "merry leaping" in the piano before revealing that they will one day carry his body to the grave.

"Im Frühling" is one of Mörike’s greatest poems. The solitary persona’s random thoughts "of this and that" in the midst of nature’s springtime beauty lead to the recognition that the past can never be reclaimed. Wolf weaves meandering lines together until they merge in the quietly majestic acclamation of "bygone unnameable days" at the end.

When Mörike was in training to become a pastor—his mother’s wish, not his—he and a friend invented a mythological island called Orplid whose protector is the goddess Weyla. In one of Wolf’s best-known songs, "Gesang Weylas," Weyla hails her distant shining realm.

We end with "Begegnung," in which a village Romeo and Juliet encounter one another in the street after experiencing a "storm" the night before. The winds of passion blow throughout the piano— sometimes dark and tempestuous, sometimes lighter and more delicate.

More Information:

We first hear Robert Schumann at the height of his love for Clara Wieck and then at the edge of his shattering descent into mental illness. The program’s second half probes deeply into the art of Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf. Dorothea Röschmann's silvery soprano, says the New York Times, is "clear and ethereally pretty on top," and "has a startling quality of voluptuousness, going down to rich, warm, earthy low notes."

Dorothea Röschmann, Soprano
DOROTHEA RÖSCHMANN

Born in Flensburg, Germany, Dorothea Röschmann made her critically acclaimed debut at the 1995 Salzburg Festival as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and has since returned to sing Countess Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Ilia (Idomeneo), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Nannetta (Falstaff), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), and Servilia and Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding, Charles Mackerras, and Christoph von Dohnányi.

At the Metropolitan Opera she has sung Susanna, Pamina, and Ilia with James Levine; at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, her roles have included Pamina and Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) with Sir Colin Davis, and Countess Almaviva with Antonio Pappano. At the Wiener Staatsoper, Ms. Röschmann has appeared as Susanna; at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, she has sung Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Susanna, Ännchen (Der Freischütz), Marzelline (Fidelio), Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), and Rodelinda (Rodelinda, regina de’ longobardi). She is also closely associated with the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin, where her roles have included Ännchen with Zubin Mehta; Nannetta with Abbado; Pamina, Fiordiligi, Susanna, Zerlina, and Donna Elvira with Daniel Barenboim. She has also appeared at La Monnaie, Brussels, as Norina (Don Pasquale) and at L’Opéra de la Bastille, Paris, as Pamina.

Her future engagements include returns to the Salzburg Festival, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Wiener Staatsoper.

Ms. Röschmann’s recent concert appearances have included the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with Harnoncourt, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Wolfgang Sawallisch, the London Symphony Orchestra with Pappano, Berliner Philharmoniker with Rattle and Bernard Haitink, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Barenboim, Münchner Philharmoniker with Levine, and The Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst.

Her appearances this season include the Vienna Philharmonic with Harnoncourt and Barenboim, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with Georges Prêtre, the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Bayerischer Rundfunk with Harding.

Her recordings include Countess Almaviva with Harnoncourt, Pamina and Nannetta with Abbado, Puccini's Suor Angelica with Pappano, Brahms’s Requiem with Rattle (winner of a Grammy and a Gramophone Award), Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Harding, Handel's Neun Deutsche Arien with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Handel’s Messiah with Paul McCreesh, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with David Daniels and Fabio Biondi, and a disc of Schumann songs with Ian Bostridge and Graham Johnson.

Malcolm Martineau, Piano
MALCOLM MARTINEAU

Malcolm Martineau was born in Edinburgh, read music at St. Catharine's College in Cambridge and studied at the Royal College of Music in London.

Recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation, he has worked with many of the world’s greatest singers, including Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Janet Baker, Olaf Bär, Barbara Bonney, Ian Bostridge, Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Della Jones, Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager, Magdalena Kožená, Solveig Kringelborn, Jonathan Lemalu, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Karita Mattila, Lisa Milne, Ann Murray, Anna Netrebko, Anne Sofie von Otter, Joan Rodgers, Amanda Roocroft, Michael Schade, Frederica von Stade, Bryn Terfel, and Sarah Walker.

Mr. Martineau has presented his own series at St. John’s, Smith Square (the complete songs of Debussy and Poulenc); Wigmore Hall (a Britten and a Poulenc series broadcast by the BBC); and the Edinburgh Festival (the complete lieder of Hugo Wolf). He has appeared throughout Europe, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Royal Opera House (Covent Garden); Teatro alla Scala, Milan; the Theâtre du Châtelet, Paris; the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona; Berlin’s Philharmonie and Konzerthaus; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; and the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein. Additional appearances include New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, and at the Aix‑en‑Provence, Vienna, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Munich, and Salzburg festivals.

Recording projects have included Schubert, Schumann, and English song recitals with Bryn Terfel (Deutsche Grammophon); Schubert and Strauss recitals with Simon Keenlyside (EMI); recital recordings with Angela Gheorghiu and Barbara Bonney (Decca), Magdalena Kožená (Deutsche Grammophon), Della Jones (Chandos), Susan Bullock (Crear Classics), Solveig Kringelborn (NMA), and Amanda Roocroft (Onyx); the complete Fauré songs with Sarah Walker and Tom Krause; the complete Britten folksongs for Hyperion; and the complete Beethoven folksongs for Deutsche Grammophon.

This season’s engagements include appearances with Sir Thomas Allen, Susan Graham, Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager, Magdalena Kožená, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Kate Royal, Michael Schade, and Bryn Terfel.

Mr. Martineau was a given an honorary doctorate from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2004, and was appointed International Fellow of Accompaniment in 2009.