Lieder, Satires, Scenes Songs by Brahms, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Bartók
Paul Thomason
Songs were the musical genre that occupied Johannes Brahms throughout his life. They were among his first works and they were among his last. Yet, as Eric Sams pointed out in his superb study of the composer’s songs, “Brahms is the most misunderstood and neglected of all the great lied-composers. He was a thorough-going Romantic, who expressed his own feelings. Yet he often chose to conceal or dissemble those feelings.” The 14 songs on this evening’s program span more than three decades of the composer’s work and offer a look at two aspects of life that were partic ularly important to him: nature and love. Brahms usually spent winter and spring in the city, but summer and autumn found him in the country, where he reveled in the woods, hills, and lakes. In Vienna his Sundays included lengthy walks through the hills and vineyards of the Vienna Woods. Love was more problematic. Before he was even a teenager, Brahms was supplementing the family income by playing the piano in what were essentially brothels in his native Hamburg, where he sometimes seems to have been treated like a toy for both the prostitutes and the customers. This early experience had a profound impact on him and he never married, although he was smitten by s everal young women and went so far as to become engaged. Without a doubt the great love of his life was Clara Schumann, the famous pianist and wife of Brahms’s mentor, Robert Schumann. She was 14 years older than Brahms and had an important influence on his work, but while part of her affection was undoubtedly maternal there was much more to their relationship. Brahms’s songs reflect his conflicted view of love, sometimes blissfully happy, but often mired in the pain of unrequited or lost love. 14
