In Burning Patience [Ardiente paciencia] by Antonio Skármeta, Pablo Neruda reproaches the postman Mario Jiménez for sending the girl he loves, as if they were his own, verses he has written. And the young man replies: “Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it”. I was thinking about it while I was preparing this article about a song by Reynaldo [...]

Performing Lied in a singable translation is not a common practice today, but it hasn’t always been this way. What are the benefits of understanding the sung text? Why can’t we bring back a tradition that wasn’t so unthinkable in other times, or that is more common in other genres today? (Guest post by Robert Garrigós i Castro)

My dearest, as I toId you last week, I am currently on holiday. If the technology behaves, you will receive a second sound postcard from a beautiful European city on Wednesday.

My dearest, I am on holiday these days, so I am sending you a musical postcard, linked not to a place but to a voice, that of tenor Fritz Wunderlich. Yesterday marked fifty-eight years since his death at thirty-five, and next week will mark ninety-four of his birth. As every year, we dedicate a post on Liederabend to recall him and thank him for the music.

In the 1880s, Antonín Dvořák was an accomplished composer who was well-known not only in Germany but also in other parts of Europe and the United States; the premiere of  his Stabat Mater in London in 1883, made him an acclaimed and claimed author in the Anglo-Saxon world.