The Complete Italienisches Liederbuch
Tue Oct 17, 18:30 - Tue Oct 17, 20:30
NWU Conservatory Hall
ABOUT
Treat yourself to the rare opportunity of experiencing a performance of the Complete Italienisches Liederbuch (The Complete Italian Songbook) by Hugo Wolf (1860-1903). on 12 September 2023 at 18:30 in the NWU Conservatory Hall. During this recital, Thembinkosi Magagula (soprano), Dolf Mathee (baritone) and Jana Mathee (piano) will join forces in performing the multitude of emotions and interactions between a male and a female in this extraordinary set of art songs.
Hugo Wolf enjoys great prestige as composer for the unmatched greatness with which he composed the art song for soloist and piano. He reached the pinnacle of his creative powers with his Italienisches Liederbuch, consisting of 46 art songs that is alternated between a male and a female voice. Wolf's choice of mostly short poems with love as central theme contributes to a feeling of unity in the work. Within this framework the intimate lyrics cover a vast range of emotions concerning love: from happiness and tenderness to jealousy and irony, from adoration and affection to lamentations, from violent outbursts of passion to capricious and playful teasing.
Since some of the songs can only be sung by a male and others by a female voice, it is easy to see the Italienisches Liederbuch as a dialogue between two lovers, and the whole work then takes on a dramatic aspect. With the publication of the Italienisches Liederbuch, Wolf retained neither the order of the poems in Heyse's (writer/poet) work nor his own sequence of composition. The order used for this programme considers Wolf's obsession with the dramatic form of the opera, especially those of Wagner's, and it groups together songs of a similar nature into five dramatic dialogues, as conceptualised by Prof. Gunther Pullvermacher.