MEDTNER SONGS
SIURINA TRITSCHLER
GRINGYTE POGOSSOV PALCHYKOV DIDENKO BURNSIDE
NIKOLAI MEDTNER (1880–1951) SONGS
EKATERINA SIURINA SOPRANO
JUSTINA GRINGYTĖ MEZZO-SOPRANO
OLEKSIY PALCHYKOV TENOR
ROBIN TRITSCHLER TENOR
RODION POGOSSOV BARITONE
NIKOLAY DIDENKO BASS
IAIN BURNSIDE PIANO
from Three Romances, Op. 3
1 No. 1 By the gate of a holy cloister
2 No. 2 I have outlived
from Nine Songs after Goethe, Op. 6
3 No. 1 Wandrers Nachtlied [II]
4 No. 2
5 No. 3
6 No. 4 Im Vorübergehn
7 No. 5 Aus Claudine von Villa-Bella
8 No. 6 Aus Erwin und Elmire I
[02:27]
[01:59]
[01:41] Two Poems, Op. 13
9 No. 1
from Seven Poems after Pushkin, Op. 29
from Six Poems, Op. 32
1 No. 1
2
3
4
5 No. 2
6
20 No. 1 Reiselied
21 No. 3 What is my name to you?
22 No. 4 If
playing time (CD2) [68:15]
These recordings would not have been possible without the unqualified generosity of Uri Liebrecht. We cannot thank him enough.
Recorded on 22-23 March, 31 May, 1, 7 & 8 June 2016 & 17-19 April 2017 in Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Pianos: Steinway, model D, serial numbers 589064 & 600443
Piano technician: Norman W. Motion
Session photography © Delphian Records
Design: John Christ
Booklet editor/Translator: Henry Howard
Consultant translator: Paul Alexei Smith
Delphian Records – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
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The key to Medtner is paradox. This defiantly self-proclaimed conservative has moments of striking modernity. Our German Russian can change, chameleon-like, into a Russian German. Medtner the dazzling performer bequeathed future colleagues finger- crunchingly complex piano parts; yet he is often most eloquent when simplest. Any Medtner enthusiast rejoices in such creative tensions.
From the vast output of Medtner songs I have chosen over 50. More than any other genre these songs exemplify Medtner’s Russian/ German divide, manifest in his devotion to both Goethe and Pushkin. And while the differences in his response to each language are fascinating, so too is their cross-fertilisation: the modal harmony of Mignon and Reiselied could hardly sound less German, or more Russian.
By choosing Goethe and Pushkin as his muses Medtner treads on hallowed turf. You have to admire the cojones of any composer daring to tackle iconic, oftenset poems after Schubert, Schumann or Rachmaninov. Medtner embraces the challenge only when he has something different to say. Mozart’s Das Veilchen is one of the earliest Lieder masterpieces, Goethe’s allegory of a rejected lover turned into exquisite eighteenth-century porcelain.
Medtner’s Veilchen is taken to the opposite extreme, fevered vocal declamation surging over turbulent keyboard polyphony, in his (and Rachmaninov’s) go-to key of passion, E flat minor. In Schubert’s Meeresstille a single sublime page of quietly rolled chords evokes Goethe’s becalmed sea. By contrast Medtner takes as his starting point ‘Deathly, awful quiet’: ‘Todes-stille fürchterlich!’ His song becomes a study in anything other than calm, an irregular metre keeping the music restless and unsettled, its beauty sinister.
Some Medtner songs have instant appeal, be it the bravura of Winter Evening or the delicious languor of Midday. Others need persistence from both listener and performer. Pianists flicking through Medtner songs for the first time can be forgiven for echoing John McEnroe: You cannot be serious. Vocal lines don’t always go where you expect them to. In preparing this recording more than one singer cried out ‘It all makes sense until you start playing!’ There is another parallel here, as Francis Pott points out below, with Hugo Wolf. As with Wolf, Medtner has a distinct vocabulary that takes time to register. I believe he is well worth the effort. Medtner’s voice is unique.
© 2018 Iain Burnside
If one considers ‘Englishness’ in music of the early twentieth century, one is struck that some of its defining figures possessed distinctly un-English names. Finzi, for example, was the scion of Italian Jewish bankers who had settled in London several generations before, while Holst was descended from Russians who had reached Britain via Riga. In such composers, perversely perhaps, the unerring instinct for some kind of indigenous sensibility seems rooted in and driven by perception of themselves as outsiders. In seeking the essence of Nikolai Medtner, arguably we are faced with a similar paradox.
Nikolai was born on 5 January 1880. His mother’s ancestry reached back to northern Germany and to Sweden, while his father Karl’s family is believed to have originated in Denmark, moving to Russia via what is now Estonia. Karl Medtner was director of a lace factory in Moscow, a prosperous and well-read man, devoted to both Russian and German culture. Accordingly the family imbibed Goethe alongside Pushkin, Beethoven alongside Tchaikovsky.
Nikolai was the youngest of five surviving children, among whom one brother, Emil, was to exercise over the composer a Svengalian influence until his death in 1936, and even afterwards. Thwarted by the gulf separating a formidable intellect from any true artistic
abilities, Emil vicariously satisfied his ambitions by seeking to ‘orchestrate’ and control Nikolai’s career. A troubled, volatile and neurotic personality, from early adult life Emil embodied an endemic Russian antisemitism, compounded by his determination to drag Russian culture back into the fold of a German literary tradition. The contradictions raging within him are exemplified by his marriage late in 1902 to Anna Bratenshi. A study of Emil by the Swedish writer Magnus Ljunggren implies that Emil was latently homosexual. Moreover, Anna came of a Jewish family. Further complexity arose when Anna and Nikolai confessed to Emil that they were passionately in love. Emil ostensibly forgave them, but swore them to secrecy in order not to outrage the bourgeois sensibilities of his parents. Inextricably linked to one another, the three became an indivisible trio bound by strange ties of mutual dependency, guilt and manipulation. Only after the death of his mother in 1918 did Nikolai finally marry Anna, who had miscarried two children by him in secret during the early years of the century.
Nikolai was described by an early colleague as ‘delicate, shy … a sensitive and lofty soul … in no way adapted to practical life’. Exiled by the Revolution in 1921, he remained heavily dependent upon his redoubtable wife, with whom he migrated to Germany, to France and finally in 1935, after many vicissitudes, to England. To the end of his life he carried
a burden of guilt over Emil, who was not above exploiting it. In a symbolic irony, Emil’s ashes rest to this day in an urn on top of Nikolai’s grave in Hendon Cemetery.
his belief in the autonomy of music as an eternal truth awaiting discovery. A composer was thus the vessel through which such truth passed, not the fons et origo of an ‘idea’ of his own.
Medtner’s idiom changed little in the course of his career, owing not least to his habit of storing ideas in notebooks and returning to them years or even decades later. This greatly complicates any attempt to ascribe definitive dates or a clear sequence to his works. For a short interval in the first decade of the twentieth century, he was justly regarded as a radical outstripping Scriabin, whose later, iconoclastic musical language began to evolve only with the appearance of his Fourth Piano Sonata in 1903. However, Medtner later made no secret of his unforgiving views on modernists such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky, as his book Muza i Moda (The Muse and Fashion, published in Paris in 1935) forcefully demonstrated. Nonetheless, a key feature of his own music is the curious and distinctive merging of a relatively conventional tonal style, and of an innate adherence to classical structure, with rhythmic cross-currents which can be playful, quasi-improvisatory in their freedom or deliberately subversive in their effect. This renders the diagnosis of mere conservatism unduly simplistic.
Medtner subscribed to an essentially Platonic view of artistic creation, central to which was
Insofar as ‘inspiration’ existed, it signified a state of receptivity, or the intermittent capacity to become a medium for something infinitely greater than the self. At the same time, the exercise of patient craft and honest labour came to signify a kind of devotional act, whereby the flawed mortal creature below exerted every sinew to mirror and embody the perfection of the primordial heavenly ‘song’ above. Medtner would presumably have understood at least half of a remark made by the Fauvist artist Henri Matisse, who disavowed any clear religious creed but still stated that, in order to create anything significant, one must put oneself in ‘the condition of prayer’. Given Nikolai Medtner’s lastingly stricken conscience on Emil’s account, it is feasible to see his interpretation of creative labour not merely as prayer, but as a form of atonement. The Platonic element extends into his sense of the consolations of composition as an exercise rather than a finished result. It is notable that, while he set many love poems, Medtner seldom if ever penned anything overtly erotic in tone.
Medtner composed over one hundred songs, the texts of which are fairly evenly balanced between Russian and German. The latter are concentrated mainly within his earlier
output, which includes three collections of Goethe settings, Opus 6, 15 and 18. This places Medtner at some remove from his friend, Sergei Rachmaninov, who occasionally set poems of Heine or Goethe in Russian translations, but who shared neither Medtner’s partially German ancestry and cultural roots nor – it is fair to suggest – the sophistication of his literary taste. Both composers naturally expressed themselves in elaborate terms where the piano was concerned – but, while Rachmaninov was also a peerless master of the orchestra, Medtner resembles Chopin in the correlation between his struggles as an orchestrator (though he composed three ambitious piano concertos) and the objective difficulties which his piano music would pose to anyone else trying to orchestrate it. For both Medtner and Rachmaninov it seems likely that, some of the time at least, a vocal solo part emerged as the by-product of a preconceived harmonic and pianistic scheme, as opposed to a melodic line providing the directional and harmonic logic for its accompaniment. In Medtner’s case, this is corroborated by the many surviving sketches for his solo piano sonatas and shorter pieces: page after page of contrapuntal workings in two or three parts attests to an uncompromising refusal to elaborate raw ideas in pianistic terms until their motivic implications and scope for imitative deployment had been fully explored. This applies as much to his piano writing in the
songs as to his extensive solo piano output. While Rachmaninov was well capable of fugal or fugato writing, as the final movements of both his Second Piano Concerto and his Third Symphony attest, with him this amounted to a rhetorical pièce d’occasion; with Medtner it was more an intellectual necessity. To refer to the piano parts in Medtner’s songs as mere ‘accompaniments’ is therefore to misconstrue their character and substance entirely. Only very occasionally does Medtner allow the voice to enter at the onset of a song; almost always, the piano sets the mood and rhythmic character. And if sometimes there is an almost incidental character to the voice part, several of the songs include felicitous canonic relationships between vocal and piano melody, revealing a subtly perceptive response to potentialities of the poetic text. In 1903 Medtner made a thorough study of poetic form which marked the beginning of his passion for Goethe, and this was to influence his approach to the setting of poetry throughout his career.
Medtner’s approach to the setting of text is almost exclusively syllabic, as opposed to melismatic; that is to say, generally he sets each syllable to a single note, reserving a ‘melisma’ (a succession of notes to a single vowel) for moments of heightened or more intimate expression. In this respect his songs bear some superficial relationship to the mélodies of Fauré, to whose harmonic language
Medtner’s occasionally bears a passing resemblance (noticeable, for example, in his First Violin Sonata). In a perceptive article, the late Malcolm Boyd suggested that Medtner’s songs lie somewhere between Wolf’s and those of Brahms – the latter having been a bugbear of Medtner’s because of a persistent and highly misleading ‘Russian Brahms’ tag that emerged from the critical press and gained persistent currency. While Boyd rightly judged that melodic interest in Medtner’s songs is sometimes subordinate to that of the piano part, he added that it is never subordinate to the words, in that it is meticulously matched to text through careful choice of pitch, volume and rhythm, in this respect placing Medtner closer to Wolf than to Brahms. Moreover, Boyd noted, Medtner’s sometimes lengthy concluding piano solos or interludes are not primarily expressive like those of Schumann, but integral to the songs’ structure.
The text in some of the earliest Goethe songs acquires a startlingly ironic gloss if one considers the circumstances of the ‘eternal triangle’ within which Medtner composed this music. Im Vorübergehn, Op. 6 No. 4, for example, speaks of courtship, and the metaphor of a flower needing to be replanted, rather than merely picked, surely has an uncomfortable personal resonance, mirrored by fluid but already distinctive displacements in the vocal and harmonic rhythm.
Before this had come Three Romances, Op. 3, with a Lermontov and a Pushkin setting; the group also included Medtner’s first move towards Goethe via a translation by the Russian poet Afanasy Fet. For Opus 13, Medtner revisited Pushkin. The storm depicted in Winter Evening, Op. 13 No. 1 called forth a swirling piano part worthy of a concert étude, yet this is offset by more sedate momentum in the underlying harmony. In the outer sections one senses the vocal line arising as a kind of descant to preconceived piano writing.
Opus 15 mostly consists of relative miniatures, despite the unabated intricacy of the piano writing. Vor Gericht, Op.15 No. 6, however, is of more imposing scale. Its earlier stages exemplify Medtner’s habit of offsetting four-beats-in-a-bar ‘common time’ with skipping, dotted groups of three quavers which subtly contradict the underlying pulse – an effect which can be either playful or turbulent. As in some Rachmaninov songs, a stormy coda allows the piano free rein after a harmonically inconclusive final vocal phrase. Meeresstille, Op.15 No. 7 takes rhythmic displacement further by rearranging what would otherwise be bars of common time into irregular alternations of three, two and three quavers, and Glückliche Fahrt, Op.15 No. 8 reveals Medtner’s concern to maintain an overarching narrative by allowing the accompaniment of ‘Meeresstille’ to persist as an introduction to the next song, relinquishing it only as the voice enters.
Opus 18 fluctuates in scale, the slender Mignon, Op.18 No. 4 followed by an unexpectedly elaborate and extended setting of Das Veilchen, Op.18 No. 5, again featuring a coda for piano alone. Opus 24 marks a return to Russian texts. The Tyutchev setting, Day and Night, Op. 24 No.1 emulates Schubert’s ‘Der Lindenbaum’ in his Winterreise cycle by visiting the same scene in metaphorical daylight and darkness, with the latter overshadowing an ostensible return to the former. Twilight, Op.24 No. 4 embodies an artlessly fluid, quasiimprovisatory way with alternating regular and irregular rhythms. A whisper, a shy breath, Op.24 No.7 is one of Medtner’s loveliest and also simplest songs. The pianist Phyllis Palmer told the present author (then her pupil, as she had been Medtner’s) that to the end of his days the composer remained ‘ecstatically in love’ with Anna, and this otherwise negligible poem becomes deeply touching if its anticipation of a new dawn is considered in the light of their devotion to one another through long years of exile and hardship.
Opus 28 brings together Fet and Tyutchev; Opus 29 is the first of four groups devoted exclusively to Pushkin. The Echo, Op. 32 No. 1 offers an encapsulation of the artist’s condition, while I loved you, Op. 32 No. 4 sets one of Pushkin’s most celebrated poems strophically. The apparent weightlessness of its opening leads into an unwontedly economical
accompaniment whose subtly elliptical harmony contrasts with the distinctive rising intervals of the vocal line.
From Opus 36, The Angel, Op. 36 No.1 unfolds a melody and harmony of quasiliturgical character, arguably marred by a rare misjudgement at the end, when banality momentarily intrudes. The most notable song in this set is Arion, Op. 36 No. 6, a formidable setting which arguably surpasses Rachmaninov’s of a few years earlier, and demands concerto-like virtuosity of the pianist. In Opus 37, the insistent repetition of the piano writing in Sleeplessness, Op. 37 No. 1 is on a similar scale and seems to allude to the sombre tolling of bells in Rachmaninov’s Etude-Tableau, Op. 39 No. 7, written only a couple of years earlier, just before its composer left Russia, as Medtner was also soon to do. In Elegy, Op. 42 No. 1, another Pushkin setting, the helpless sense of being hostage to events is conveyed in a studied dislocation of the vocal rhythm from its underpinnings in the piano part, which becomes menacingly disruptive in the central stages.
Opus 46 ventures further into German Romantic literature. In Winternacht, Op. 46 No. 5 Medtner responds to the protoexpressionism of Eichendorff’s poem with an eerie introduction which both echoes one of his own earlier solo piano pieces and finds the harmonic means perfectly to convey a frozen
nocturnal landscape, before an intimation of spring brings about a thunderous climax.
A further seven Pushkin settings make up Opus 52. The Raven, Op. 52 No. 2 respects the roots of the poem in a Scottish Border ballad in its plausible evocation of folk melody and the intermittent modality of its harmony. The itinerant Medtners had already made their first visit to England; by the time of the final group, Opus 61, they were permanently resident in Britain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Reiselied, Op. 61 No. 1 adopts the trudging gait of Schubert’s winter traveller, albeit in a more weightlessly linear fashion which hints both at both folk modality and Russian Orthodox liturgy. In music that echoes two earlier works, the Sonata-Vocalise and SuiteVocalise for soprano and piano, Op. 41 Nos 1 and 2, this most autobiographical of composers responds to the poem’s existential journey with a backward glance as well as a forward one, by including a dreaming, wordless refrain which is heard at the midpoint and at the end. Midday, Op. 61 No. 6, sits on the cusp of two keys, leaving the matter tantalisingly unresolved.
Upon going to his bed, the devout composer would bid goodnight to his faithful piano by playing a perfect cadence in C major, signifying affirmation of his faith in God and of the sanctity of art, but also meek acceptance of divine will and the natural order. His most-performed
and best-known work remains the piano solo Sonata-Reminiscenza, written when he knew that departure from his homeland was imminent. In such a context, the memory in the title became memory anticipated, and it is not too fanciful to characterise Medtner’s voice as ‘music in the future-perfect tense’. It is the expression of an arduous journey taken through life, and of a present or future richly coloured by a dreamt-of, irrecoverable past. Medtner’s besetting difficulty has been that his challenging, intricate music demands repeated effort from its listener, while an elusive and reticent quality of understatement, even in his most vividly forceful moments, deters many from making the crucial second attempt. Those who have persisted will attest that, once Medtner’s music gets under the skin, it remains there. As the pianist Hamish Milne has written, far from being dismissed as merely conservative, ‘as an expression of man’s struggle and indomitable spirit, it can rightfully claim the more highly prized epithet – timeless’.
© 2018 Francis Pott
Francis Pott is Professor of Composition at London College of Music within the University of West London. His works, which have been performed and broadcast in over 40 countries, are extensively published and also recorded on many labels, including Delphian.
from Three Romances, Op. 3
By the gate of a holy cloister
By the gate of a holy cloister, One stood, begging, Weak, pale and thin From hunger, thirst and pain.
He asked but for a piece of bread, And his look showed the anguish of his life, And someone put a stone Into his outstretched hand.
Even so I begged for your love, With bitter tears, with longing, Even so my better senses Have been deceived by you forever!
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814–1841)
I have outlived my desires
I have outlived my desires, I have ceased to love my dreams; There is only suffering left for me, Fruit of the heart’s emptiness.
Under the storms of cruel fate
My crown that blossomed has withered –Sad, lonely, I live, And wait: is my end coming?
Stricken by a late frost, And the noisy whistle of a winter storm, Alone – on a bare branch Trembles one last leaf!
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837)
from Nine Songs after Goethe, Op. 6
3 Wandrers Nachtlied [II]
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh’, In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
4 Mailied
Zwischen Weizen und Korn, Zwischen Hecken und Dorn, Zwischen Bäumen und Gras, Wo geht’s Liebchen? Sag mir das!
On the Road at Eventide II
In the hills
All’s still.
In the trees Barely a breeze And no bird song. Wait awhile, before long You too’ll be at ease.
May Song
Between wheat fields and corn, Between hedgerows and thorn, Among the grasses and trees, Where is my beloved? O tell me please!
Fand mein Holdchen Nicht daheim; Muss das Goldchen Draußen sein; Grünt und blühet Schön der Mai, Liebchen ziehet Froh und frei.
An dem Felsen beim Fluss, Wo sie reichte den Kuss, Jenen ersten im Gras, Seh’ ich etwas! Ist sie das?
5 Elfenliedchen
Um Mitternacht, wenn die Menschen erst schlafen,
Dann scheinet uns der Mond, Dann leuchtet uns der Stern; Wir wandeln und singen Und tanzen erst gern.
Um Mitternacht, wenn die Menschen erst schlafen, Auf Wiesen, an den Erlen Wir suchen unsern Raum Und wandeln und singen Und tanzen einen Traum.
I found that my dearest Was not at home – It’s out here in the open That she loves to roam Among the green and the blossom All flowering in May, That’s where my sweetheart Will be making her way.
By the rock at the river’s edge
Where she gave me the kiss, The first we did pledge, There’s something I see – O, can it be she?
The Elves’ Little Song
At midnight once folk are asleep, Then the moon shines only for us, Then for us the stars light And we stroll and we sing, And go dancing for our delight.
At midnight once folk are asleep, In the mead by the alders We look for our site, And we stroll and we sing, Our dance is a dream of delight.
6 Im Vorübergehn
Ich ging im Felde
So für mich hin, Und nichts zu suchen, Das war mein Sinn.
Da stand ein Blümchen Sogleich, so nah, Dass ich im Leben Nichts lieber sah.
Ich wollt’ es brechen, Da sagt’ es schleunig: ,Ich habe Wurzeln, Die sind gar heimlich.
Im tiefen Boden
Bin ich gegründet;
Drum sind die Blüten
So schön geründet.
Ich kann nicht liebeln, Ich kann nicht schranzen; Musst mich nicht brechen, Musst mich verpflanzen.‘
Ich ging im Walde
So vor mich hin; Ich war so heiter, Wollt immer weiter –Das war mein Sinn.
Passing on
I was wandering out across the fields
With no particular aim in mind.
There was a flower in my path, Lovelier than any I’d ever find.
I wanted to pick it, but it said in haste, ‘I have roots, though these are unseen.
‘Deep in the earth is where I am based; It gives my bloom that perfect sheen.
‘I cannot love, I cannot flatter. Don’t pick me, but plant me elsewhere.’
I was wandering out through the woods, Ever onward and full of cheer; That aim in mind now quite clear.
7 Aus Claudine von Villa-Bella
Liebliches Kind, Kannst du mich sagen, Sage, warum Zärtliche Seelen
Einsam und stumm
Immer sich quälen?
Selbst sich betrügen
Und ihr Vergnügen
Immer nur ahnen da, Wo sie nicht sind?
Kannst du mich sagen, Liebliches Kind?
8 Aus Erwin und Elmire I
Inneres wühlen
Ewig zu fühlen; Immer verlangen, Nimmer erlangen, Fliehen und streben, Sterben und leben, Höllische Qual, Endig’ einmal!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1742–1832)
From Claudine von Villa-Bella
My dear child, Can you tell me, Tell me why Gentle souls Alone, silently Always torment themselves, Nay, deceive themselves, Their pleasure always, They suppose, lies Where they are not? Can you tell me why, My dear child?
From Erwin und Elmire I
Inner turmoil
Ever present, Inner longing Ne’er quiescent, Fleeing, striving, Living, dying, This hellish thrall Ends – once, and for all.
Two Poems, Op. 13
Winter Evening
Sable clouds by tempest driven, Snowflakes whirling in the gales, Hark – it sounds like grim wolves howling, Hark – now like a child it wails!
Creeping through the rustling straw thatch, Rattling on the mortared walls, Like some weary wanderer knocking –On the lowly pane it falls.
Fearsome darkness fills the kitchen, Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet!
Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily?
Has the spinning wheel’s soft whirring Hummed a cradle song to thee?
Sweetheart of my youthful Springtime, Thou true-souled companion dear –Let us drink! Away with sadness!
Wine will fill our hearts with cheer. Sing the song how free and careless Birds live in a distant land
Sing the song of maids at morning
Meeting by the brook’s clear strand!
Sable clouds by tempest driven, Snowflakes whirling in the gales, Hark – it sounds like grim wolves howling, Hark – now like a child it wails!
Sweetheart of my youthful Springtime, Thou true-souled companion dear, Let us drink! Away with sadness! Wine will fill our hearts with cheer!
Aleksandr Sergeyevich
Epitaph
He believed in golden brilliance, And he died of arrows from the sun.
The century’s thought he measured,
But his life he could not prolong.
Do not mock the dead poet:
Bring him a flower.
In winter and in summer
My porcelain wreath will strike my cross.
The flowers on it are defeated.
The image is faded.
The tiles are heavy.
I’m waiting for someone to remove them.
I only loved the sound of bells And the sunset.
Why am I in so much pain, so much?
It’s not my fault.
from Twelve Songs after Goethe, Op. 15
11 Wandrers Nachtlied I
Der du von dem Himmel bist, Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest, Den, der doppelt elend ist, Doppelt mit Erquickung füllest; Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde! Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede, Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!
12 Selbstbetrug
Der Vorhang schwebet hin und her Bei meiner Nachbarin.
Gewiss, sie lauschet überquer, Ob ich zu Hause bin,
Und ob der eifersücht’ge Groll, Den ich am Tag gehegt, Sich, wie er nun auf immer soll, Im tiefen Herzen regt.
Pity me, come; I’ll rush towards my wreath, Oh, love me, love me –
Maybe I haven’t died – maybe I will return.
I will awake ...
On the Road at Eventide I
You, who are from heaven
Soothing all our grief and pain, And giving him who’s doubly wretched Twice the will to live again, O, I am so tired of striving! What’s the point of joy and strife?
Sweet peace, Peace is all I want from life.
Self-deception
The curtain’s swaying to and fro At the window of the girl next door; She’s looking out across the way, That I’m home, she’s making sure.
And whether the jealous grudge I’d held on to all day long Was now for ever laid to rest Where it could do no wrong.
Doch leider hat das schöne Kind Dergleichen nicht gefühlt.
Ich seh’, es ist der Abendwind, Der mit dem Vorhang spielt.
13 Vor Gericht
Von wem ich’s habe, das sag’ ich euch nicht, Das Kind in meinem Leib. ,Pfui!‘ speit ihr aus: ,die Hure da!‘ Bin doch ein ehrlich Weib.
Mit wem ich mich traute, das sag’ ich euch nicht.
Mein Schatz ist lieb und gut, Trägt er eine goldene Kett’ am Hals, Trägt er einen strohernen Hut.
Soll Spott und Hohn getragen sein, Trag’ ich allein den Hohn.
Ich kenn’ ihn wohl, er kennt mich wohl, Und Gott weiß auch davon.
Herr Pfarrer und Herr Amtmann, ihr, Ich bitte, lasst mich in Ruh’!
Es ist mein Kind, und bleibt mein Kind; Ihr gebt mir ja nichts dazu.
Unfortunately the pretty girl Felt nothing of the sort. I see it was the evening breeze And the curtain making sport. In Court
Whose it is I will not say, The child that’s in my womb. ‘Shame,’ you cry, ‘Look at the whore!’ But I am a decent woman.
Who I wed I will not say.
My beloved is good and kind. He wears a gold chain round his neck, His straw hat is most refined.
If mockery and scorn there is, So, mockery be my due. I know it well and it knows me, Our Lord, He knew it too.
You Mister Priest and Mister Clerk, If you please, just let me be. It is my child, will be my child, I expect no charity.
14 Meeresstille
Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser, Ohne Regung ruht das Meer, Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer Glatte Fläche rings umher.
Keine Luft von keiner Seite, Todes-stille fürchterlich.
In der ungeheuern Weite Reget keine Welle sich.
15 Glückliche Fahrt
Die Nebel zerreissen,
Der Himmel ist helle, Und Aeolus löset
Das ängstliche Band.
Es säuseln die Winde, Es rührt sich der Schiffer, Geschwinde! Geschwinde!
Es teilt sich die Welle, Es naht sich die Ferne, Schon seh’ ich das Land.
Calm Sea (Becalmed)
Profound stillness pervades the waters, The sea rests motionless, And anxiously the boatman looks out Over the smooth surface all around.
No breath of air from any quarter!
Deathly, awful quiet!
In that immense tract, No wave, no movement.
Prosperous Voyage
The mists are shredding, The sky is clear And Aeolus frees us From anxiety’s bonds. The winds whisper, The boatman stirs.
Speed! Make speed!
The bow-wave is parting, Distance grows closer, There, I see land!
from Six Poems after Goethe, Op. 18
16 Mignon
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiß, was ich leide! Allein und abgetrennt Von aller Freude, Seh’ ich ans Firmament Nach jener Seite.
Ach! der mich liebt und kennt, Ist in der Weite.
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt Mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt Weiß, was ich leide, Allein und abgetrennt Von aller Freude.
17 Das Veilchen
Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand, Gebückt in sich und unbekannt; Es war ein herzigs Veilchen.
Da kam eine junge Schäferin Mit leichtem Schritt und munterm Sinn Daher, daher, Die Wiese her und sang.
Mignon
Only someone sick with yearning Knows just what it is I feel; Alone, cut off From any pleasure I scan the heavens In the distance there.
But he who knows and loves me Is so far from anywhere!
My heart and soul are burning, And how my head does reel! Only someone who’s been sick with yearning Knows just what it is I feel. Alone, cut off From any pleasure.
The Violet
A violet stood in the grass Unnoticed and withdrawn. It was a dear little violet.
A young shepherdess came along, Light of foot, a sprightly soul, Came closer, closer
O’er the grass singing a song.
Ach! denkt das Veilchen, wär’ ich nur
Die schönste Blume der Natur, Ach, nur ein kleines Weilchen, Bis mich das Liebchen abgepflückt
Und an dem Busen matt gedrückt, Ach, nur, ach nur
Ein Viertelstündchen lang!
Ach, aber ach! Das Mädchen kam
Und nicht in acht das Veilchen nahm, Ertrat das arme Veilchen.
Es sank und starb, und freut’ sich noch: Und sterb’ ich denn, so sterb’ ich doch
Durch sie, durch sie, Zu ihren Füßen doch!
18 Jägers Abendlied
Im Felde schleich’ ich still und wild, Gespannt mein Feuerrohr. Da schwebt so licht dein liebes Bild, Dein süßes Bild mir vor.
Du wandelst jetzt wohl still und mild
Durch Feld und liebes Tal, Und ach, mein schnell verrauschend Bild, Stellt sich dir’s nicht einmal?
Des Menschen, der die Welt durchstreift
Voll Unmut und Verdruss, Nach Osten und nach Westen schweift, Weil er dich lassen muss.
Ah, thinks the violet, if only I were the loveliest flower in the world, For just a little while, Until the dear girl picks me And clasps me to her breast. If only, if only, For just a quarter hour long.
Oh, but woe, the shepherdess O’erlooked the violet, Crushed the violet underfoot. It fell, it died, rejoicing yet:
If I must die, so then I die Because of her, of her And at her very feet.
A Hunter’s Song at Day’s End
In the field, stalking, silent, fired up, My shot-gun cocked aright, Your image, so fair, so dear, hovers So sweetly in my sight.
No doubt you’re taking a gentle stroll Through field and pleasant vale, But, does my fading image appear Not even once to tell the tale?
Of the man who roams throughout the world, Ill-tempered, sick at heart, Who roves to East, to West For he from you must part.
Mir ist es, denk’ ich nur an dich, Als in den Mond zu seh’n; Ein stiller Friede kommt auf mich, Weiß nicht, wie mir gescheh’n.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
from Eight Poems, Op. 24
As soon as I think of you I feel I’m looking at the moon; A quiet peace comes over me; How came about this boon?
Fyodor
Day and Night
In the mysterious world of spirits, Above this nameless abyss, A cloth-of-gold mantle is cast over the High will of gods. Day – this glorious mantle, Day, life-giver for the earth-born, Cure for an ailing soul, Friend of men and gods!
But the day is fading; night has fallen; Has come – and, taking from the mortal world The blessed fabric of the mantle Casts it away …
And the abyss is naked to us With its terrors and shadows, And there are no barriers between it and us –And this is why the night is terrible for us!
The Willow (Why are you bending your head?)
Why are you bending your head
To the waters, Willow, And with trembling leaves,
Like greedy lips, Catch the runaway stream? …
What though each leaf of yours
Trembles, though it quivers above the stream … Nevertheless the stream runs and splashes, And, glowing in the sun, glistens, And laughs at you …
The blue-grey shadows have blended together, Colour has faded, sound has fallen asleep –
Life, movement, in the unsteady twilight, Have dissolved into a distant rumble …
A moth flies past, invisible
Heard in the night air …
Hour of ineffable longing! …
Everything in me, and I in everything! …
Quiet twilight, sleepy twilight,
Pour into the depths of my soul,
Quiet, dark, fragrant,
All flood in and calm me –
Feelings of the haze of self-forgetting
Fill me to overflowing! …
Let me taste of oblivion, Blend me with the slumbering world!
Afanasy Afanasyevich
I am struck dumb
I am struck dumb when all around The forests rumble, thunder roars And in the brilliance of the lights I look up from below, When, stirred up in fright, The ocean crashes against the cliffs Of your silver robe.
But serene and speechless, Winnowed by an unearthly power I stand not in this heavy moment, But in an hour when, as if in a dream, Your bright angel whispers to me Unutterable words.
I catch fire and burn, I strive and steam
In an agony of extreme effort And I believe in my heart that I am growing Outspread wings And at once they will carry me to the sky.
A whisper, a shy breath
A whisper, a shy breath, The trills of a nightingale, And silver ripples
Of a sleepy stream.
Light of the night, night’s shadows, Shadows without end,
A series of magical changes
On a sweet face,
Purple roses in hazy clouds,
The gleam of amber, And kisses, and tears, And the dawn, the dawn! …
Unexpected Rain
Everything is clouds, clouds, but around me Everything is burned up, everything dies … Which archangel with his wing Calls me to the fields?
The rain fell like light smoke, In vain, the alkaline steppe around me, And above me, all alone, A rainbow stood in the dawn.
Be at peace, restless poet, –From the sky comes the moisture of life; What you wait for is not there, Only what is undeserved is good.
I – I can do nothing; One only can, who, almighty, Has raised the translucent arc And sends clouds for living things.
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet
Afanasy Afanasyevich
Whenever I hear birdsong
Whenever I hear birdsong I instantly take wing in my heart; I can’t even, contrary to my habit, Sigh in silence as you come in.
You don’t blush, you don’t turn pale, Your looks are full of a quiet fire; It’s painful for me to see how you can Not see, or hear me!
I’m disturbing you involuntarily,
You must redeem your triumph: In such a cloudless dawn, it is impossible For someone to be so young and radiant!
The Butterfly
You’re right: with one airy outline So dear am I.
All my velvet with its vivid flash –Is nothing but two wings.
Don’t ask me: where did you come from? Where am I hurrying to?
I landed lightly here on this flower And now – I’m breathing.
Do I want to breathe a long time, Without purpose, without effort?
Right now, I’ll give a flash of colour, spread my wings And fly away.
I sit, thoughtful and alone
I sit, thoughtful and alone,
At the dying fireside
I gaze through tears …
I think about the past with longing
And in my despondency,
I cannot find words.
The past – when was it?
Will what is now – always be? …
It will pass –
Pass it will, as all has passed,
And will sink into the dark chasm –
Year after year.
Year after year, century after century …
Why should man, this earthly leaf of grass,
Rail at his fate? …
He will soon, soon wither – even so,
But with a new summer comes new grass
And a different leaf.
And once more everything that now is will be,
And once more roses will blossom,
And thorns the same …
But for you, my poor, pale flower,
There will be no revival,
You will not bloom again …
You were plucked by my hand,
With what joy and longing –
God knows!
Stay on my breast,
While the last breath of love
Has not died in her …
from Seven Poems after Pushkin, Op. 29
The Singer
Did you hear beyond the grove the night voice Of the singer of love who sings of his sadness?
In the morning, when the fields were silent, It was the plaintive and simple sound of the pipe.
Did you hear it?
Did you meet in the desolate darkness of the forest
The singer of love who sings of his sadness? Did you notice a trace of tears or smile, Or a gentle and mournful glance?
Did you meet him?
Did you sigh to hear the tender voice Of the singer of love who sings of the sadness?
When you saw the young man in the forest, And met the look of his mournful eyes, Did you sigh?
tr. Dmitri Smirnov (en.wikisource.org)
Lines Written During a Sleepless Night
I cannot sleep, there is no fire;
Darkness is everywhere, and irksome sleep.
Only the monotonous progress of the clock Sounds near me.
Women’s babbling from the park,
Tremulous in the sleeping night,
The scurrying of mousy lives …
What are you worrying me about?
What do you mean, you tiresome whispering?
A reproach, or a murmur
Of my lost day?
What do you want of me?
Are you calling me or foretelling?
I want to understand you,
To learn your dark speech …
The Rose
Where is our rose,
My friends?
The rose, the child Of dawn, has wilted.
Do not say:
That’s how youth fades!
Do not say:
That’s how life’s joy fades!
Say to the little flower:
Forgive me, I’m sorry!
And to the lily Point us.
The Incantation
Oh, if it’s true, that in the night,
When the living lie at rest, And moonbeams from the sky
Glide over gravestones,
Oh, if it’s true that at that time Silent graves are emptying –
I call a shade, I await Leila:
To me, my friend, come here! Come here!
Come, beloved shadow,
As you were before parting,
Pale, cold as a winter’s day,
Distorted by your last agony.
Come like a distant star,
Like a light sound or a breath,
Or like a terrible apparition,
I do not care, come here! Come here! …
I do not call on you so as to
Reproach those whose anger
Killed my friend,
Or to reveal the secrets of the grave, Nor because sometimes
I’m tormented by doubt … but in my yearning,
I want to say that I love wholly,
That I’m all yours: come here! Come here!
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
from Six Poems, Op. 32
The Echo
Whether a beast roars in the woods,
Whether a horn winds, whether thunder rumbles,
Whether a maiden sings beyond the hill –
To every sound
Your response in the empty air
You suddenly give out.
You hear the roar of thunder,
And the voice of the storm and the waves,
And the cry of the country shepherds –
And give out your answer;
No one replies to you … It’s the same
With you, poet!
Anton Antonovich Delvig (1798–1831)
from Six Poems after Pushkin, Op. 36
Can I ever forget that sweet moment? (Waltz)
Can I ever forget that sweet moment, When I lived in you and saw only you, And in the waltz’s frenzied round Envied the freedom of your impudent eyes? I begged: stay, you wonderful moment! Make the fast waltz turn without turning,
So I’d never let my eyes leave the lovely one And oblivion would fold us in its wing …
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
I loved you
I loved you; and perchance until this moment
Within my breast is smouldering still the fire!
Yet I would spare your pain the least renewal,
Nothing shall rouse again the old desire!
I loved you with a silent desperation –
Now timid, now with jealousy brought low, I loved devoutly, – with such deep devotion –
Ah may God grant another love you so!
tr. Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi (1866–1943)
The Angel
At the gates of Eden, a gentle angel Shone, with head bowed, And a demon, gloomy and rebellious, Flew above the hellish abyss.
The spirit of rejection, the spirit of doubt Looked on the spirit of purity And for the first time dimly knew The involuntary warmth of a tender emotion.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I saw you, And you did not shine on me in vain: Not everything in heaven have I hated, I have not despised everything in the world.’
The Flower
A flower withered, its scent gone,
I see forgotten in a book;
And now my soul has become filled With a strange dream:
Where did it bloom? When? In what spring?
And how long did it flower for? and by whom was it plucked,
By a stranger, or a well-known hand?
And why was it placed here?
As a memory of a tender encounter,
Or of a fateful separation,
Or a solitary walk
In the quiet of the fields, in the shade of the forest?
And is he alive, and is she still alive?
And where is their little nook now?
Or have they already withered,
Like this unknown flower?
As soon as roses wilt
As soon as roses wilt,
Still breathing ambrosia, To Elysium
Their delicate souls fly away.
And there, where sleepy waves Bear oblivion,
Their fragrant shades
Blossom over Lethe.
Spanish Romance
A night zephyr
Flows through the ether.
Splashes,
Rushes
The Guadalquivir.
There the moon has risen golden, Hush … listen … a guitar’s strumming …
There a young Spanish girl
Leans over a balcony.
A night zephyr
Flows through the ether.
Splashes,
Rushes
The Guadalquivir.
Cast off the mantilla, sweet angel, And appear as a bright day!
Through the iron railings
Put out your delightful little foot!
A night zephyr
Flows through the ether.
Splashes,
Rushes
The Guadalquivir.
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Arion
There were many of us in the bark: Some manned the sails, Others, as one, plunged the powerful oars
Deep in the waters. In calm seas, Our wise helmsman, bent over the wheel, Guided the heavily laden bark. And I, trusting and carefree, Sang to the seafarers … Suddenly, The waves’ bosom
Was crushed by a roaring whirlwind … The helmsman and the seamen perished.
Onto the shore thrown by the storm, I sing the hymns I sang before, And my damp raiment
I dry by the cliff, in the sun.
tr. Natalia Challis, from The Singer’s Rachmaninoff
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
Sleeplessness
The monotonous striking of the clock –
The story of the weary night!
A language equally foreign to everyone And distinct for everyone, like conscience!
Which of us has heard without melancholy, Amid the world’s silence, Time’s deaf groan, Its voice foretelling our departure?
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
It seems to us the orphan world Is overtaken by irresistible Destiny –And we, in the struggle, have been abandoned To ourselves by the whole of Nature.
And our life stands before us, Like a ghost at the end of the earth, And along with our times and our friends It fades into the gloomy distance …
And a new, young generation Meanwhile, has blossomed in the sun, And we, our friends, and our age Are long forgotten in oblivion!
But occasionally, completing its sad ritual At the hour of midnight,
The funerary voice of the metal Sometimes mourns for us!
Tears
Mankind’s tears, oh mankind’s tears,
You flow now early, now late …
Flow unknown, flow unseen, Inexhaustible, innumerable, –Flow, as streams of rain pour Sometimes in the muffled autumn night.
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet
Waltz
Was it so long ago that beneath magic strains
We flew round the hall, I with her?
Her gentle arms were warm,
Warm were her starry eyes.
Yesterday they sang her funeral chant,
The tomb was without a roof;
With eyes closed, motionless, She slept under a brocade.
I slept … over my bed
The moon stood as for a dead man.
Beneath the wonderful strains, I with her, We flew round the hall together.
The hearts of abandoned friends; They, tasting immortality,
Await them in Elysium,
As a dear family wait at a feast
For their tardy guests …
But, maybe, these are empty dreams –
Maybe, in my grave-robe
I will forsake all my earthly feelings,
And the world of the earth will become alien to me; Maybe there, where everything shines
With imperishable glory and beauty, Where the pure flame burns away
The imperfection of existence, Will my soul not keep hold of
The momentary sensations of life, Will I not know regrets, Will I forget the yearning of love? …
Elegy
I love your unknown twilight
And your secret flowers,
Oh you, blest fantasies
Of lovely poetry!
Poets, you have persuaded us
That a weightless crowd of shadows
Is on the banks of cold Lethe, They fly to the world’s shore
And, unseen, visit
Places where all was sweeter,
And in dreams console
The Cart of Life
Although sometimes there’s a heavy load in it, The cart goes on its way lightly;
The intrepid coachman, gray-haired Time, Carries us onward and does not get off the driver’s seat.
In the morning we sit down in the cart; We hurry on with the coachman And, scorning idleness and luxury,
We shout: On you go, once and for all!
But at noon we don’t retain that courage; We have been shaken; we are more afraid
Of the slopes and ravines;
We shout: Go easy, you fool!
The cart rolls on as before;
In the evening we have grown used to it, And, tired, we go to our night’s lodgings –And Time speeds the horses on.
Our Time
Not flesh, but spirit is corrupted in our days, And Man yearns desperately …
From the shades of night he longs for the light, But grumbles and rebels at the blessed day.
Pale and withered by unbelief,
Today he endures the unendurable … And aware of his own destruction He craves faith … but does not ask for it.
No matter how grieved, he will never say
With prayers and tears before the closed door:
‘Let me in! – I believe, O my God!
Come to the aid of my unbelief! …’
from Seven Poems, Op. 46
15 Geweihter Platz
Wenn zu den Reihen der Nymphen, versammelt in heiliger Mondnacht, Sich die Grazien heimlich herab vom Olympus gesellen: Hier belauscht sie der Dichter und hört die schönen Gesänge, Sieht verschwiegener Tänze geheimnisvolle Bewegung. Was der Himmel nur herrliches hat, was glücklich die Erde Reizendes immer gebar, das erscheint dem wachenden Träumer. Alles erzählt er den Musen, und dass die Götter nicht zürnen, Lehren die Musen ihn gleich bescheiden Geheimnisse sprechen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
16 Im Walde
Es zog eine Hochzeit den Berg entlang, Ich hörte die Vögel schlagen, Da blitzten viel Reiter, das Waldhorn klang, Das war ein lustiges Jagen!
Und eh’ ich’s gedacht, war alles verhallt, Die Nacht bedeckte die Runde, Nur von den Bergen noch rauschet der Wald Und mich schmerzet im Herzensgrunde.
Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857)
The Hallowed Place
When to join the assembled ranks of Nymphs The Graces, on a sacred moonlit night, Descend secretively from Olympus, Then the Poet listens in to them And hears the beautiful songs, Sees the mystical movements of secret dances.
Whatever Heaven has that is magnificent, Whatever delights the world happily brings forth, All appear to the wakeful dreamer. He recounts everything to the Muses; Not to incur the wrath of the Gods, The Muses then teach him to reveal Secrets with due humility.
In the Forest
A wedding-group on the ridge went past, I could hear the birds in full song, A troop of horse flashed by, a horn’s blast, A hunt riding merrily along!
And before I’d realised, the sound had gone And night was covering the land; Only the forest rustling up in the hills And the terror I had to withstand.
17 Winternacht
Verschneit liegt rings die ganze Welt, Ich hab’ nichts, was mich freuet, Verlassen steht der Baum im Feld, Hat längst sein Laub zerstreuet.
Der Wind nur geht bei stiller Nacht Und rüttelt mit dem Baume, Da rührt er seinen Wipfel sacht Und redet wie im Traume.
Er träumt von künft’ger Frühlingszeit, Von Grün und Quellenrauschen, Wo er im neuen Blütenkleid Zu Gottes Lob wird rauschen.
Joseph von Eichendorff
from Seven Songs on Poems by Pushkin, Op.52
Winter Night
The world around lies under snow, My joy in life is shattered. Deserted in the field a tree, Its leaves lie long since scattered.
Only the wind in the still of night Came causing the tree to shake, And it gently moved its topmost boughs; As in a dream it spake:
He’s dreaming of the spring to come, The green, the streams all thawed, When dressed in blossom overall He’ll rustle praise unto the Lord.
The Raven (Scottish Song)
Raven to raven flies, Raven to raven cries: ‘Raven! Where to dine?
How can we find out?’
Raven to raven replies:
‘I know where there’s dinner for us; In an open field, beneath a willow Lies a dead knight.
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, after a French translation of a Scottish ballad
‘Who killed him and why, Only his falcon knows, And his black mare, And his young lady.
‘The falcon flew away to a grove, On the mare sat his enemy, And his lady is waiting for her sweetheart, Not the dead man, but the living.’
Serenade
I’m here, Inesilia, I stand under the window. Seville is embraced By darkness and sleep.
Full of valour, Wrapped in a cloak, With my guitar and sword I’m here under the window.
Are you sleeping? With my guitar I’ll wake you.
If the old man wakes, I’ll lay him out with my sword. Bring the silken ladder To the window …
Why are you so slow? Is there A rival here already? …
I’m here, Inesilia, I stand under the window.
Seville is embraced By darkness and sleep.
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
from Eight Songs, Op. 61
20 Reiselied
So ruhig geh’ ich meinen Pfad, So still ist mir zu Mut.
Es dünkt mir jeder Weg gerad’ Und jedes Wetter gut.
Wohin mein Weg mich führen mag, Der Himmel ist mein Dach, Die Sonne kommt mit jedem Tag, Die Sterne halten Wach.
Und komm’ ich spät und komm’ ich früh Ans Ziel, das mir gestellt:
Verlieren kann ich mich doch nie, O Gott, aus deiner Welt!
Joseph von Eichendorff
Song of Travel
Making my way at an easy gait, My mind so free from care, It seems that all paths must be straight And the weather always fair. Wherever it is my road may lead, My roof will be the sky, The sun will rise with every day, Whilst stars watch from on high.
And whether I arrive early or late At the end destined for me, I can never get lost, O Lord, In the world created by Thee.
What is my name to you?
What is my name to you?
It will die, like the mournful sound Of a wave breaking on a distant shore, Like a night sound in the muffled forest.
It will leave a dead trace
On a memorial sheet, like
The pattern on a gravestone
In a language not understood.
What’s in it? Long forgotten
Amid new and restless turmoils,
It won’t give your soul
Any pure and tender memories.
But on a day of sorrow, in the silence,
Tell of it sadly;
Say: there is a memory of me,
There is a heart in the world, where I live …
What is my name to you?
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
If life deceives you
If life deceives you,
Do not grieve, do not be angry!
On a day of despondency, be reconciled to it:
A day of mirth, believe it, will come.
The heart lives in the future, though The present may be sad:
Everything is ephemeral, everything will pass; What will pass will be dear to you.
Aleksandr
Midday
Hazy noon breathes lazily, Lazily the river runs, And in the ardent and clear heaven, Lazily the clouds melt away.
And a hot drowsiness, like a fog, Encompasses all nature, And now great Pan himself Slumbers peacefully in the nymphs’ cave.
Translations from the German © Uri Liebrecht www.uritext.co.uk
All other translations not otherwise attributed © 2018 Delphian Records Ltd
Renowned for her sparkling soprano and charming stage presence, Ekaterina Siurina is already establishing herself as one of the leading sopranos of her generation. She regularly sings in top houses including Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Opera de Paris, the New York Met and at the Salzburg Festival. Ekaterina’s calling card roles include Gilda (Rigoletto ), Ilia (Idomeneo ), Ann Trulove (The Rake’s Progress ), Adina (L’elisir d’amore ), Amina (La Sonnambula ), and Giulietta (I Capuleti e i Montecchi ). Ekaterina has worked with numerous conductors including Evelino Pidò, Daniel Oren, Philippe Jordan, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Richard Bonynge. Her debut solo album Amore e Morte was released recently and features songs by Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini; in 2014 she featured on Delphian’s Gramophone Awards-shortlisted recording of the songs of Rachmaninov (DCD34127).
2015 International Opera Awards Young Singer of the Year, Lithuanian mezzo - soprano Justina Gringytė is acclaimed for her ‘knockout technique’ (The Times ), having captivated the classical music press in the role of Carmen for both English
National Opera and Scottish Opera. With a voice that is ‘steel clad, hotly phrased, superbly controlled’ (The Guardian ), she ‘commands the stage, alternately spitting out or sliding deliciously around in her vocal lines, imperious one minute and fragile the next’ (The Scotsman ).
The 2017/18 season sees Justina Gringytė return to Welsh National Opera for her role debuts as Preziosilla and Curra in a new David Pountney production of La forza del destino, and to Lithuanian National Opera in the title role in Carmen and in her role debut as Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi. She will also make her role debut as Dalila in Samson et Dalila for Vilnius City Opera.
Following her initial voice studies at Lithuania’s Academy of Music and Theatre, Justina Gringytė joined the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and London’s National Opera Studio. She studies with Buddug Verona James. She is a former Samling and Jette Parker Young Artist. She featured in Delphian’s highly acclaimed 3-CD set of Rachmaninov Songs (DCD34127) with Iain Burnside.
Oleksiy Palchykov was born in 1986 in Kyiv, and studied at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music, making his stage debut in 2008 and winning numerous awards in prestigious international competitions in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany and Finland.
Since May 2017 he has been a member of the ensemble of Staatsoper Hamburg, where he will be heard in roles such as Tamino, Lensky, Ferrando, Nemorino, Eurimaco (Il ritorno d’Ulisse ), Paris (La belle Hélène ), Almaviva, Lysander (Britten, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ), Cassio (Otello ) and Beppe (Pagliacci ).
Recently he has appeared as Nemorino as cover for Roberto Alagna at the Opéra Bastille, Ferrando with the Atelier Lyrique of the Opéra de Paris in Antibes, Lensky in Garsington, Arturo (Lucia di Lammermoor ) and Ruiz (Il trovatore ) at the Opéra Bastille, Sinowi (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk ) and Arturo (Lucia di Lammermoor ) in Zurich, Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail ) in Toulon, and Grizko (Mussorgsky, Der Jahrmarkt von Sorotschinzi ) at the Komische Oper Berlin.
Acclaimed for his ‘radiantly lyrical’ voice, Irish tenor Robin Tritschler graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and was a BBC New Generation Artist. He performed with the Welsh National Opera (Almaviva, Nemorino, Narraboth, Ferrando, Don Ottavio and Belmonte), Nantes Opera, Stadttheater Klagenfurt, La Monnaie Brussels and Teatro Colon Buenos Aires; in concert with the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Scottish Chamber orchestras, London Philharmonic Orchestra (under Jurowski, Nézet-Séguin and Stutzmann), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (under Karabits), Hong Kong Philharmonic (under de Waart) and at the BBC Proms (under Sir Mark Elder).
He performs regularly in recital at the Wigmore Hall, also appearing in Cologne, Amsterdam, Washington and for the Aldeburgh and Aix-enProvence festivals. His recording of World War One songs with Malcolm Martineau received critical acclaim. His engagements for 2017/18 include the opening recital of the Wigmore Hall season, the St John Passion in Dresden and Salzburg with Philippe Herreweghe, Schwanengesang in San Diego with Inon Barnatan, and concerts with Ensemble Pygmalion (directed by Raphaël Pichon), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and for the Risor Chamber Music Festival.
Rodion Pogossov joined the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the beginning of his early career and made his Carnegie Hall debut with The Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble under James Levine. His operatic roles include Guglielmo (Così fan tutte ), Figaro (Il Barbiere di Siviglia ), Schaunard and Marcello (La bohème ), Papageno and Silvio (Pagliacci ) to name but a few. He regularly performs at major houses across the world including the Michigan Opera Theatre, LA Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro Municipal de Santiago, the Metropolitan Opera and Glyndebourne.
A ‘wonderful’ recitalist, his solo appearances have included St John’s Smith Square, Suntory Hall, Vancouver Recital Society and Wigmore Hall with orchestras including the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic. Rodion has recorded for the EMI Debut Series and his solo recital disc includes songs by Rachmaninov, Mahler, Tchaikovsky and Grieg. He was one of seven ‘phenomenal’ (BBC Music Magazine ) singers contributing to the 2014 Delphian Rachmaninov Songs recording (DCD34127).
Nikolay Didenko graduated from the Moscow Academy of Choral Art in both singing and conducting. His operatic roles include Cappelio (I Capuleti e i Montecchi ), Ramfis ( Aida ), Oroveso (Norma ), Trieste (La Forza del Destino ), Pistola (Falstaff ), Filippo II (Don Carlo ) and Leporello (Don Giovanni ). He continues to perform across the world with many significant companies including the Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Opera North, Metropolitan Opera, Bilbao Opera, the Bolshoi and at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier.
Well established on the concert platform, he has performed with Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Malmö Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra among many others. He features on the Grammy awardwinning disc Penderecki Conducts Penderecki (2017).
Iain Burnside is a pianist who has appeared in recital with many of the world’s leading singers (‘pretty much ideal’, BBC Music Magazine ). He is also an insightful programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition. His recordings straddle an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to the cutting edge, as in the Gramophone Award-winning NMC Songbook. Recent Delphian recordings include the complete Rachmaninov songs with seven outstanding Russian artists (DCD34127: ‘the results are electrifying’, Daily Telegraph ) and Schubert Lieder with Ailish Tynan and Roderick Williams (DCD34165 and 34170 respectively). Burnside’s passion for English song is reflected in acclaimed CDs of Parry, Shaw, Britten, Finzi, Ireland, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams.
Away from the piano Burnside is active as a writer and broadcaster. As presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Voices he won a Sony Radio Award. For the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Burnside has devised a number of singular theatre pieces, including Swansong, an exploration of Schubert’s Schwanengesang A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was performed at the Barbican Centre and the Cheltenham Festival, and later broadcast by BBC Radio 3.
Future highlights include performances of the three Schubert song cycles with Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall and a major series of Russian song there in the 2018 season. Other forthcoming projects feature Ailish Tynan, Rosa Feola, Andrew Watts, Robin Tritschler and Benjamin Appl. Iain Burnside is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.
Biography photo credits:
Ekaterina Siurina, © David Elofer
Justina Gringytė, © Paul Marc Mitchell
Oleksiy Palchykov, © Natalia Rusu
Robin Tritschler, © Sussie Ahlburg
Rodion Pogossov, © Daniil Rabovsky
Nikolay Didenko, © Nikolay Didenko
Iain Burnside, © TallWall Media
Rachmaninov: Songs
Evelina Dobraceva soprano, Ekaterina Siurina soprano,
Justina Gringyte mezzo-soprano, Daniil Shtoda tenor,
Andrei Bondarenko baritone, Rodion Pogossov baritone, Alexander Vinogradov bass, Iain Burnside piano
DCD34127 (3 discs)
This first complete recording for twenty years of Rachmaninov’s published song output (with the addition of two delightfully comic occasional pieces) lays two further claims to importance: our seven singers – hand-picked by renowned pianist Iain Burnside – are all native Russian speakers, and every song is performed in the key in which Rachmaninov wrote it, respecting both the specificity of vocal colour and the carefully designed tonal and expressive trajectory within each opus. For the first twenty-five years of his career Rachmaninov regularly expressed himself in song, from Tchaikovskian beginnings to the extraordinarily personal range of vocal and pianistic utterance in his final two collections. Almost a century after exile brought down the curtain on this period of his creative output, Burnside and his singers bring these works to shimmering, gushing, crackling, magnificent life.
‘seven phenomenal young singers … Burnside remains a firm, clear companion throughout’ — BBC Music Magazine, May 2014, CHORAL & SONG CHOICE
‘a richly rewarding and fascinating set … The star of the show is undoubtedly Burnside, playing throughout with unfailing intensity and sensitivity: voice and piano are truly equal partners here, and the results are electrifying’ — Daily Telegraph, February 2014
‘[Burnside] recognises the integral expressive role of the piano in these songs … Sung gloriously with palpable heart and soul’ — Gramophone, May 2014, EDITOR’S CHOICE
Shortlisted in the Vocal category at the 2014 Gramophone Awards
Schubert Lieder: Nacht und Träume
Ailish Tynan soprano, Iain Burnside piano
DCD34165
This selection of songs could carry the subtitle ‘Women in Love’. ‘L’Education sentimentale’, perhaps. Ailish Tynan and Iain Burnside have assembled a portrait gallery: a whole bevy of Schubert’s women pursuing different sorts of love, nurturing different Biedermeier dreams. Goethe’s Gretchen finds an intriguing counterpart in Schiller’s Amalia. Ellen gazes out over Loch Katrine, while Serafina looks down affectionately at her fortepiano. A young nun welcomes her destiny as the bride of Christ. The first volume in Burnside’s carefully crafted voyage of Schubert song sees Ailish at the height of her powers, in music that has been her ‘life’s dream’ to record.
‘a partnership of obvious subtlety and sophistication’ — Classical Ear, December 2015
Schubert Lieder: Der Wanderer Roderick Williams baritone, Iain Burnside piano
DCD34170
Following the critical acclaim for Iain Burnside’s partnership with soprano Ailish Tynan in the first volume of Burnside’s Schubert song series on Delphian, this second volume sees him partnered by another friend and long-term collaborator, baritone Roderick Williams. Their lovingly designed programme takes its tone from the strand of journeying and farewell that threads through Schubert’s song output. Burnside’s pianism is as masterful and vivid as ever, while Roderick Williams, fresh from his triumph at the 2016 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, combines drama and intellect and shows the qualities that continue to endear him both to critics and to audiences.
‘Williams is an unfailingly intelligent singer and is matched every step of the way by Burnside … This is an enjoyable – and beautifully recorded – programme.’ — Gramophone, October 2016
The Shadow Side: contemporary song from Scotland
Irene Drummond soprano, Iain Burnside piano
DCD34099
For many years Irene Drummond has been the leading exponent of contemporary song in Scotland. With her partner Iain Burnside – peerless in this music – she offers here a fascinating snapshot of her repertoire. From the rarefied sparseness of James MacMillan to the sustained luminosity of Paul Mealor and the emotionally charged dramatic outbursts of John McLeod, The Shadow Side explores a world of half-lights and visceral intensity.
‘… soprano Irene Drummond at her most breathtakingly stellar and seductive’ — The Herald, June 2011
‘Iain Burnside shares the credit for performances of total focus’ — BBC Music Magazine, October 2011
From a city window: songs by Hubert Parry
Ailish Tynan, Susan Bickley, William Dazeley / Iain Burnside piano
DCD34117
Recorded in the music room of Hubert Parry’s boyhood home, Highnam Court in Gloucestershire, this disc sees three of our finest singers shed illuminating light on an area of the repertoire that has rarely graced the concert hall in recent times. As English song came into full flower at the turn of the 20th century, Parry’s substantial contribution to the genre became buried. Iain Burnside and his singers rediscover what has been forgotten by historical accident – and what a treasure chest of song they have found! Still best known for two short choral works, Parry is at last undergoing something of a revival, and these beautiful performances return his songs to the heart of his output, where the composer always felt they belonged.
‘Ailish Tynan, Susan Bickley and William Dazeley sing them with ardour and sensibility, and Iain Burnside’s piano accompaniments are full of subtle insight’ — The Times, January 2013
The Airmen: songs by Martin Shaw
Sophie Bevan, Andrew Kennedy, Roderick Williams / Iain Burnside piano
DCD34105
Despite a compositional career spanning both World Wars, remarkably little is known about Martin Shaw’s music. It has yet to enjoy the revival of interest that has benefited the legacies of close friends such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. Shaw’s songs range from the whimsical and effervescent to the deeply melancholic, and will be a revelation to many. In rescuing these gems from obscurity, Iain Burnside and his first-class singers have given new life to an unjustly neglected figure.
‘Their style is bold, diatonic and memorably melodic … These performances, with Burnside the immaculate accompanist, are exemplary’ — The Guardian, March 2012
Insomnia: a nocturnal voyage in song
William Berger baritone, Iain Burnside piano DCD34116
For his solo debut on disc, William Berger has devised an ingenious sequence of seventeen songs describing a sleepless night experienced by a man who reflects on his love for an unnamed woman. From Viennese classicism to fin-de-siècle Romanticism, shadowy English pastoral to the contemporary worlds of Richard Rodney Bennett and Raymond Yiu, this wide-ranging programme is brought to nuanced life by an outstanding young baritone, while the indefatigable Iain Burnside provides lucid and imaginative accompaniment. Together, their performances capture the full gamut of nocturnal emotions.
‘plays out its chronological narrative … with logical and psychological inevitability. Berger sustains a magnetic affection throughout the varied sequence, aided by Burnside’s deft pianism’ — The Scotsman, July 2012
