Songs from Near and Far. An evening with Minette, Louise and Hendrik

Concert 2

Songs from Near and Far

Minette Du Toit-Pearce - mezzo soprano

Louise Lansdown - viola

Hendrik Hofmeyr - piano

If you click on TICKETS the option to book dinner at The Langhuis before the concert will be there!

Minette, Hendrik and Louise go back many years. In 1993 Louise began studying at Stellenbosch University where she met Minette who at the time also played the viola. Hendrik was one of their academic tutors. During this thirty year period they have remained in touch, admired one another’s career trajectories and have particularly connected via Hendrik and his music. You could say that this concert is a reunion.

Just across the road from The Showroom is The Langhuis, owned and managed by the Prince Albert Community Trust. A beautiful building that is used as a restaurant, shop, beauty treatment centre and cookery school!! The most important thing you need to know is that they have a pizza oven and fabulous wine. You cannot come to Prince Albert and not go to The Langhuis. Come and eat pizzas specially designed for this event, drink delicious wine, meet wonderful people and relax before the musical menu begins at The Showroom @7.30pm.

Programme

Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935)

Quatre Poëmes for voice, viola and piano op.5

La Cloche Félée

Dansons La Gigue!

Le Son du cor S’afflige vers les bois

Sérénade

Benjamin Dale (1885-1943)

Two songs from Shakespeare

Come away, death

Hendrik Hofmeyr (1957*)

Two Songs

Musiek (Lina Spies)

Quiete (Giuseppe Ungaretti)

INTERVAL

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)

Three Songs

Far, far from each other

Where is it that our soul doth go?

Music when soft voices die

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Two Songs op.91

Gestilte Sehnsucht (Friedrich Rückert)

Geistliches Wiegenlied (Emanuel Geibel)

Programme Notes

The combination of mezzo, viola and piano is one numerous composers have been attracted to. This exquisite collection of songs will take you through a kaleidoscope of emotions and nationalities with music re-invented via texts. Starting with the song cycle by Charles-Martin Loeffler op.5. With texts by Baudelaire and Verlaine these songs journey from a Cracked Bell, Dancing, the sound and meaning of the horn and a mournful Serenade. Loeffler was a German-born American violinist and composer (1861-1935).

Benjamin Dale’s “O come away death” follows the Loeffler, a haunting war-time song with a text from Shakespeare’s Twelth Night. An ill-timed trip to Germany resulted in Dale spending the first World War in an internment camp where he suffered a great deal. While still in Germany he wrote two songs from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with the second “Come away, death” incorporating a viola obbligato. He never recovered from these years in Germany, and although he did continue to compose he was never the same. Dale passed away on 30 July 1943.

The last items before the interval features two exquisite songs composed by Hendrik Hofmeyr.

Musiek [Music] (Lina Spies)

The melodic line in this setting of Lina Spies’ paean to music is transfixed by shafts of harmonic colour as metaphor for the relation between the poet and music; the music first heard on the viola and piano becomes the ‘backlighting’ to the vocal line, suffusing it as the sun does the leaf in the poem.

Quiete [Stillness] (Guiseppe Ungaretti)

This setting underscores the vein of Romantic mellowness that is barely hinted at in the laconic text.

After interval you will be treated to two of the most renowned sets of songs composed for mezzo, viola and piano, those by Frank Bridge and Johannes Brahms. Bridge’s Three Songs (H.76) were composed between 1906 and 1907. The songs feature poetry by Matthew Arnold, Heinrich Heine, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The first performance was in 1908, with the composer at the piano. They were not published until 1982. These haunting and magical songs are exquisitely crafted using the timbre of the three instruments to create this masterpiece.

For the finale of the evening you will hear Brahms two songs op.91. Brahms composed these musical gems for his great friend the violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife Amalie (intended as a wedding present). The first song “Longing at Rest” with the text by Rückert was composed in 1884. The second, “Sacred Lullaby”, text by Geibel was set to music in 1863. The two songs were published together in 1884. This heartbreakingly tender and beautiful music will leave you feeling good about life. The perfect finish to the evening.