This week I'm advancing the posting one day because today was presented the programme of the Schubertíada 2018, with many new things and many lied recitals, and I wanted to share it with you right away!

 

Let's begin with the Schubertíiade Vilabertran, the 26th edition, which will take place from August 17th to September 2nd; There will be sixteen concerts; among them, eleven song recitals. Yes, you read it right, eleven. You can mark in your diary an important week, the seven recitals from the 21st to the 27th of August; The first three song recitals will be held during the first weekend of the Schubertíada and the last one, during the last weekend. The opening concert is again given for a young singer accompanied by Wolfram Rieger; last year the  [...]

 

 

The musical illustration is supposed to be the most important thing in my blog posts, but six years ago, online gurus warned that posting without graphic illustrations was virtually a digital suicide. So, I had to think what kind of images could illustrate my texts and songs. The singer's photograph? Sooner or later I would run out of photos and would have to reuse them. The same thing would happen with pianists, composers or poets. What about the album cover? But, not always there is an album available. Then I got it: a painting! It would somehow be a divertimento to find a painting for every post. And thanks to this decision, now I have a word for the Q letter in Liederabend's alphabet: Q is for Quadres, that's to say, for paintings. Otherwise, finding another word for such an unusual letter would have been a real problem!

 

I'm not thinking of stablishing 14th February as "Ophelia's Day" on Liedarabend, but I jotted down some Ophelia's songs in my notebook and we’ve only heard, so far, those of Brahms (last year, at the very same period) and Strauss (some weeks later). So, this week we're talking about Ophelia and Moniuszko, no matter the song doesn't talk exactly about Valentine's Day.

Stanisław Moniuszko is considered the father of Polish national opera; pieces such as Halka or Straszny Dwór (The Haunted House) made his name known beyond the Slavic countries. He's also considered the liaison between the most international figure in Polish music, Frédéric Chopin, and the greatest name of the [...]

 

Die Götter Griechenlands is a long poem written by Friedrich von Schiller in 1788. His publication in a magazine led to a huge controversy, and the poet was accused of being heretic and atheist because of his criticism towards Christianity. Two years later, he rewrote it and the twenty-five initial verses were reduced to sixteen. He probably had more reasons but deleting the most offensive remarks suggests he wasn't indifferent to that scandal. Despite having tempered it so much, the poem was still unpleasant for many people, and when it was published in 1805 (just a few controversial pages within a volume of poetry) the book was left on the highest shelves of bookcases in many homes, thus generating a kind of "Streisand effect" in the 19th century.