We're already in the middle of summer, which means it's time to take a break or, at the very least, slow down. Regular readers know that Liederabend doesn't make holidays, but I try to make lighter posts during the summer months. As usual, August will be devoted to the Schubert, and I have been considering what I could do in July.

Andante. Andantino. Adagio. Andante molto moderato. These are usual tempo indications in Gabriel Fauré's mélodies, which are usually slow, quiet, intimate songs. Therefore, it is striking to find in a recital a song by Fauré indicated as allegro energico.

Some of you may remember the series I wrote about Wilhelm Masters songs, which began in October 2013 and ended eighteen posts later in June 2016. We all often heard in recitals the songs of Mignon and the harpist, included in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, so the aim was to put them into context. Actually, there are fourteen songs in [...]

On 3 November 2021, I started a series of songs, “The Buch der Lieder and ten composers”. The series had a prologue, the article Buch der Lieder (I), in which I told you about this collection of poems by Heinrich Heine, one of the most important in German literature and fundamental in the history of Lied. Schubert and Schumann are the composers most closely [...]

For those of us who live near the Mediterranean, rosemary is a part of our culture, landscape, and gastronomy. We coexist with this simple shrub that is accustomed to drought, wind, and salt. Even when spring arrives and flowers, they do so discreetly, unlike other plants that have their glory moment with exuberant flowering. The rosemary's flower is tiny [...]