“It's said that a fierce, terrible monster devastated the outskirts of Montblanc; he was able to walk, fly and swimm, and his breath stank so much that it poisoned the air and everybody who breathed it, even from far away, died. It wreaked havoc upon herds and people and the whole land was absolutely terrified.”
Almost two years ago, I talked about the art song programme in Barcelona on a blog post. I said back then that it was a sort of 
There are plenty of songs about spring; so many that it has been difficult for me to choose just one. The first choice to be made was, should it be a sad or a happy song? (Because poets can become sad and melancholic even in view of spring); I chose happy, so I discarded some of those songs. Among the happy ones, I firstly thought of sharing with you Frühlingsmorgen by Mahler, because it's a “sister” song with last week’s (Song of the week: Erinnerung (G. Mahler) - B. Fassbaender, I. Gage
From time to time, I make some comments about those annotations that we find in scores, if I think they might be useful to highlight a detail or a performing. Sometimes you’ve asked me about these annotations; this week's song has just reminded me of this, so this post is, very briefly, about this matter. If you already know about it you can go straight to listen to Erinnerung, an early song by Gustav Mahler; he wrote it around 1880, from a poem by Richard Leander, pseudonym of the prestigious surgeon Richard von Volkmann (I'm not sure I want to know how surgery was performed in the 19th century). Alternatively, you can also keep on reading and to correct, complete, enlighten... whatever it takes. I would be very grateful.
