Der Knabe und Das Immlein, others

Program Note:

Hugo Wolf and Johann Strauss both worked in and around Vienna, but the similarities end there. Whereas Strauss was urbane, long-lived and affluent, Wolf's short compositional career unfolded between severe bouts of depression and spurts of emotional outpouring. Musically speaking, Strauss' waltzes revel in predictable rhythm, regular dance form, and broad themes. Wolf's concentrated technique, on the other hand, focuses on minutiae and poetry for its expressive power. The four songs performed this evening come from a collection of 53 settings of Eduard Mörike's poems, which Wolf completed in just over eight weeks in 1888. During the next year he wrote more than 100 additional songs. Sadly, only a few works were written in the 1890s, and after 1897 syphilitic insanity gradually took control of Wolf's creative mind.
Wolf's penchant for chromatic writing emerges in Der Knabe und das Immlein. Voice and piano enjoy surprising and dissonant misdirections—the piano trilling both high and low to keep pace with the bee's buzzing—but Wolf's sense of melodic architecture assures a measured progression toward the poem’s expressive peak. In Nimmersatte Liebe, Wolf seems to discover space between the notes, extracting a Wagnerian “insatiable” yearning from the combination of off-beat accent and sliding semitones. The daring opening of Zur Warnung, which Wolf indicates to be sung with a raspy tone, spotlights melting harmonies and pointillist gestures decades ahead of their time. Finally, A Lover's Song (Lied eines Verliebten) is far less lyrical than one would anticipate given the title. The voice uses declamation more than melody, and unsettled affections prevail.

(c) Jason Stell